Financiarul

Almost two thirds of the Romanians, namely 63 percent, are afraid that the presidential elections will be rigged, reads an opinion poll conducted by the Social Research and Branding Company (CCSB) and which the Alliance for Fair Elections made public, on Monday.

The opinion poll shows that 20 percent of the Romanians think the elections are not rigged in Romania; in May, 52 percent believed they were.
Distributing handouts, through the town and city halls, before the elections, the electoral tourism (the candidates organize the voters to be transported and vote in other localities), directly buying the votes or changing the voting results in the polling stations are some of the fraud methods, the respondents mentioned.

According to them, tougher punishments for those caught rigging the elections, strengthening the authorities’ check ups, introducing mandatory voter cards and mandatory voting are efficient ways to stop the electoral fraud.
Fifty-two percent of the Romanians agree on the introduction of the mandatory vote, and 42 percent are against it.

At the same time, 68 percent of the respondents are against, and 23 percent are in favor of the legal age for exercising the right to vote to be decreased to 16 years.
The poll shows that more men than women believe that the elections are rigged.
As for the voters’ age, young people between 18 and 29 are the most who believe that the elections are rigged.

In terms of the voters’ education, 53 percent having elementary, 66 percent secondary and 68 percent higher education opined there was electoral fraud.
According to the poll, 67 percent of those who think that the elections are rigged, do not go casting their ballots.
The opinion poll was conducted over Sept 17-19, on a sample of 1,083 people, at a tolerated error of 3.1 percent, at a probability level of 95 percent.

The poll was made public on the occasion of launching the programme on the election campaign for the presidential elections by the Alliance for Fair Elections and the Pro Democratia Association, the Media Monitoring Agency (AMP) and Cartel Alfa Trade Union Confederation staged it.

On the same occasion, it was also made public the Report on the EU Funds Transparency in Romania, drawn up in the framework of the project bearing the same name, and financed by the European Union through a PHARE Programme, implemented by AMP in partnership with the Romanian Center for Journalism and Investigation.

During Jan-July 2009, the authorities benefiting from EU funds, such as the county councils and the town halls received 290 requests for public information.
In case of the county councils, the answers came to AMP within 20 days and the answer rate for the town halls amounted to 100 percent.

The item ‘problems come up during the implementation,’ scored the lowest answering rate. As for the indices of the consultancy company and the agreements reached within the project, 24 and 17 percent respectively of the county councils supplied no data about these indices, in their answers.