Photo: UNDP Moldova

Electoral education materials for the 2019 parliamentary elections were adapted to be easily understood and accessed by various groups of voters. The publications were presented on September 26th 2018, at an event organized by the Central Electoral Commission and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Moldova.

For the first time in the Republic of Moldova, there was developed and printed the easy-to-read version of Voter's Guide in Romanian, Russian and English. This publication is dedicated to informing people with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities. There have also been presented the brochures "Democracy Matters - Participate!" and "Democracy is Learnt" in Braille along with the audio version accessible to people with visual impairments.

"The Central Electoral Commission will continue its efforts to ensure that people with disabilities can fully exercise their political rights and the opportunity to enjoy these rights equally with other Moldovan citizens. I think it is our duty, of the society as a whole, to work together, so that those 5% of the country's population, which means over 180,000 people with disabilities, can have free access to information and can exercise unhindered their political rights," said Alina Russu, chairperson of the Central Electoral Commission.

The Executive Director of the "INFONET" Alliance, the non-governmental organization that worked side by side with the Association "Motivation”, said: "To be able to plan our future, we need to ensure veridical information and equal access of all citizens to exercise their voting right."

Also today, the electoral education materials in Gagauz language were presented. This is a novelty both for the Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Moldova and for the Electoral Commission from ATU Gagauzia. Thus, people from the region received the brochure "Democracy Matters - Participate!" and the explanatory poster of the mixed electoral system in three languages: Romanian, Russian and Gagauz.

Attending the event, Marin Alla, the executive director of the non-governmental organization "Tarna Rom" noted that the information campaign conducted by mobile teams in all localities of the Republic of Moldova where there representatives of the Roma minority live.

Alla Skvortova, UNDP Program Specialist, said: "Only through consistency, involvement, synergies, support from the international community, but also through a strong commitment of the state materialized through concrete actions we will be able to ensure a fair and accessible electoral process in which every man and woman, regardless of the social or ethnic group, each person feels important, and his voice is heard."

The information campaign will continue until the parliamentary elections in February 2019.

The event took place in the framework the project "Strengthening democracy in Moldova through inclusive and transparent elections" implemented by UNDP Moldova with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the British Embassy in Chisinau through the Good Governance Fund and the Dutch Embassy through The Matra program.