The Romanian Academic Society (SAR) and the Alliance for Clean Romania (ACR) have launched a new database containing all the relevant information about the integrity of candidates for the parliamentary elections to take place on 9 December 2012. The portal was inaugurated during a press conference held on 25 November. The motto of the initiative is “Click on the name of the candidate and find out who is the person seeking your vote”.
The purpose of this initiative is to expose politicians seeking (re)election while failing to respect the integrity criteria. Candidates who face either an investigation or a conviction for corrupt practices should be known to voters, journalists, and to civil society in general. The project, entitled “Check the integrity of your candidate”, will show the percentage of candidates endorsed by each political party for the parliamentary election who fulfil the selected integrity criteria, as well as their names.
By checking the integrity of a candidate, every citizen will be in a position to evaluate him/her according to the following monitoring criteria:
- collaboration with the secret police of the former regime (“the Securitate”)
- positions held in the Communist apparatus, prior to ’89
- political and administrative positions held since ’89
- migration from one political party to another;
- nepotism: the degree of kinship between the candidate and other members of the same political party
- the wealth of the candidate
- business and contracts with state
- the debt of the candidate’s firms to state
- conflicts of interest and incompatibilities
- arrests and convictions
- sponsorship to political parties
- racist and discriminatory public statements
This is the first database which allows citizens to access a centralised record of the activity of elected representatives and government officials throughout their mandate. In the long term, the information can be used to evaluate the evolution of the Romanian Parliament in terms of integrity. This database will be open for subsequent modifications in the status of the investigation and in case of political migration. It will also serve as a tool for monitoring future corruption cases involving state officials.
The picture featured above is from romaniacurata.ro.
