Development of civil society

Advancement of democracy and good governance

Diagnosis

In the last years, a remarkable develop-ment of non-governdevelop-mental organisations can be noted, the number of offi cially reg-istered organisations rising to more than 7,000. Th us, today the ratio is of a little less than 2 non-governmental organisations per 1,000 inhabitants. Th is index places our country behind several Central European states (e.g. Hungary where the ratio is 4 NGOs per 1,000 inhabitants) but ahead of Ukraine, where the ratio is one organisa-tion per 2,000 inhabitants. Th e dynamics of the tertiary sector development reveals a sizeable increase of the locally-registered organisations. In 2006, the community-level NGOs matched the number of the national ones.

Th e existing NGOs cover various fi elds of activity, but around half of them are active in the social fi eld or in education¹³⁸. NGOs active in the social fi eld achieved impres-sive results and a consistent involvement in the process of designing public policies and services (see section SOCIAL PROTEC

TION POLICIES). But oft en NGOs do not focus on a single area. Most organisations are quite opportunistic, securing enough manoeuvre space and adjusting to the de-mands of the donors’ community. Th us, it is diffi cult to compile an activity-fi eld break-down. Analysis of the evolution of the ac-tivity areas shows that in the last 5 years the share of social area organisations increased, while the share of organisations operating in areas such as human rights, health, sports etc. diminished. Th e community develop-ment organisations recorded an outstand-ing evolution.

It is too early to speak about profes-sionalism of the services rendered by the NGOs. At the same time, organisations face the lack of knowledge and abilities to ensure fi nancial sustainability and support from the authorities and communities. Although compared to 2001, a progress was recorded, technical endowment of the organisations, especially of the community-based ones, is modest¹³⁹.

NGOs raise their fi nancial means from diff erent sources. Sponsorships from inter-national donors are the main source, while for the small local organisations the mem-bership fees are still very important. Th e de-gree of transparency of the NGOs is directly proportional to the amount of their budgets (large-budget organisations must conduct fi nancial audit), but generally speaking, transparency is low¹⁴⁰. Very few organisa-tions carry out external audit, while the in-ternal one is ineffi cient due to dysfunctions of the organisational control structures.

Although almost half of the NGOs have communication strategies, communication with both the domestic and foreign envi-ronments lacks consistency and the public information in media about their activities is irregular and ineffi cient. It is not surpris-ing that image of the NGOs and the level of people trust in this type of organisations is extremely low¹⁴¹.

Cooperation with state structures is not systematic and oft en incoherent. Such coop-eration proved to be more successful on the local level, because the community prob-lems aff ect in the same manner all members of the community. On the national level, the cooperation requires higher competence, as well as lobby and advocacy skills, and these are the most problematic issues of the asso-ciative sector in Moldova¹⁴². Although im-portant progress in this respect can be not-ed¹⁴³, participation of the

Advancement of democracy and good governance

tal sector in the decision-making process is still modest. Th is situation was illustrated by the passivity displayed by the civil society in the implementation of EGPRSP, in the de-velopment and discussion of the National Development Plan and in public debates ac-companying the legislative process.

Cooperation of NGOs with the busi-ness community is only starting. Im-perfect legal framework, low fi nancial capacities of the business circles, few similarities and common initiatives, low credibility of the non-govern-mental organisations in businessmen’s perception are only a few reasons which impede a lasting cooperation oriented towards improving the com-munities. At the same time, the fact that the Government forces many private companies to fi nance some of its projects cuts the amount of private resources, which the companies would be ready to donate to NGOs.

Cooperation between NGOs is quite successful in certain networks. But competition between organisations with similar profi le is also noted. Th e existence of many non-governmental networks and alliances should not be seen as a sign of close cooperation be-tween NGOs. Th e main index should be the network activities and prod-ucts, but these are too few in order to reach any conclusions in this respect.

Risks

Analysis of the non-governmental sector reveals the following risks:

Professionalisation of the non-governmental organisations is delayed because they tend to cover too many areas of activity. As of today, very few organisations specialise in a single area of activity. In a long run, this could result in lack of professional services rendered by non-gover-nmental organisations. Most organisations pre-fer to operate in more than one area, adapting to the donors’ priorities. In these conditions, consolidation of the organisational, institutional and human capacities is diffi cult.

Impact of the activities carried out by the non-governmental organisations will be further diminished due to their limited institutional capacities. Having minimum resources, witho-ut a clear area of interest, depending excessively on foreign funding, it will be very diffi cult for the Moldovan NGOs to respond to their benefi -ciaries’ needs and exercise the role of mediators between the state and citizens.

Th e non-governmental sector will continue to depend excessively on foreign funding and its sustainability is doubtful. Due to the unfriendly fi scal framework, dysfunction of the legislation on philanthropy and sponsorship, lack of public policies concerning “social requests”, and exces-sive unoffi cial taxation of businesses, NGOs will continue to depend heavily on foreign fi nancial resources.

Th e non-governmental organisations will con-tinue to have a low degree of transparency.

Reduced institutional capacities to ensure an effi cient communication with the internal and external environments, failure to involve media in the promotion of NGOs activities, as well as high costs of auditing services will contribute to maintaining a low degree of transparency of the NGOs.

Participation of the non-governmental sector in the decision-making process will be insigni-fi cant. On one hand, this situation is explained by the low capacities of central authorities to co-operate with the civil society in the process of draft ing, implementing and evaluating public policies. On the other hand, NGOs have limited abilities to involve in the process. Th ere is also a lack of trust between the two sectors.

Citizens’ confi dence in NGOs will not impro-ve. Th e level of citizens’ confi dence in the non-governmental organisations will stay low due to the problems related to transparency of the NGOs activities. Th is situation is also infl uen-ced by the fact that very few organisations have distinct groups of benefi ciaries and maintain a constant relationship with them through the ac-tivities carried out.

Public policies regarding the non-governmental sector are permissive, but can easily change to restrictive ones. Th e national legislation concer-ning NGOs activities is currently undergoing re-form. Th e tendencies are not quite encouraging and there are enough reasons to believe that the state wishes to intensify control over these or-ganisations. Th e last amendments to the Law on civic associations, as well as certain approaches included in the draft Law on Non-commercial Organisations of Public Utility¹⁴⁴ confi rm this trend.

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Advancement of democracy and good governance

Governmental policies

Governmental policies in the area of civil society are incoherent and unsystem-atic. Up to this moment, there are no state strategies on the civil society development (as, for example, in Latvia). Apparently, the central authorities do not see in the civil society a potential solid partner for dialog and cooperation in the process of draft ing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating public policies. Currently, although there are some positive trends in the cooperation between the public structures and non-gov-ernmental organisations, the former do not contribute to the civil society development.

Th e legislation governing the civil so-ciety activity is undergoing a process of re-form, and there are alarming signs related to the respect of the principle of freedom of association, such as a tougher governmental control.

Public policies in the area of philanthro-py are futile. Th e Law on philanthropy and sponsorship is inactive due to its cumber-some implementation mechanism and lack of incentives to donate. Application of this law by private donors is diffi cult because it oft en results in informal taxation.

Th e legal framework on the cooperation between the state and civil society is ineffi -cient and imperfect. A Concept of coopera-tion of the Parliament with the civil society was approved¹⁴⁵, establishing the mechanism of involving the NGOs in the law-making process. At the same time, cooperation of the civil society with the executive power is not offi cially regulated.

Th ere is no legal framework on “social requests”. In the Republic of Moldova there is no experience related to “social requests”

performed by the non-governmental or-ganisations. Th is issue is not even included on the public or institutional agenda of the public authorities. Unfortunately, the NGOs do not display a particular interest for this issue, although they should.

Th ere is neither an adequate legal framework, nor a strategy regarding the concession of public services to the non-governmental organisations. Th e states with an advanced democracy have established practices of public services’ concession to

NGOs. Th e reasons are simple: the non-governmental organisations render such services at a lower price, maintaining at the same time their quality. In the Republic of Moldova, there are fi rst signs of such prac-tices on the community level related to wa-ter supply and local roads maintenance. But generally, this process is neither regulated, nor encouraged.

Recommendations

Th e international support programmes for NGOs should be oriented towards building their sustainability, and the priorities should be based on a permanent analysis of the NGOs develop-ment needs.

Th e non-governmental organisations should be encouraged and assisted to consolidate their in-stitutional capacities. Th is should be achieved by all interested and involved factors. Th e resour-ce resour-centres for NGOs should draft their support programmes according to the non-governmen-tal organisations development needs. Funding programmes of the donor institutions should encourage the associations’ development throu-gh institutional development support, while pu-blic authorities could back this process through public policies in this fi eld.

In order to increase the degree of transparency, NGOs must be encouraged to use internal con-trol tools. Most non-governmental organisati-ons face operational defi ciencies of the structure elements, in particular of the internal control bodies. Both the organisations’ management and donor institutions should support the ope-ration of NGOs managing boards and of audit and ethics commissions. Also, a regular internal auditing in NGOs should be encouraged.

Th ere is a need to draft a national public strate-gy for the development of civil society. Th e ci-vil society’s capacity to respond to the citizens’

needs and to advocate their interests before the public authorities indicate the degree of demo-cratisation of the society. In order to achieve the objectives of European integration, the Moldo-van authorities should pay more attention to the consolidation of civil society. Without a strong civil society the credibility of the initiatives for European integration is doubtful.

Th e state control over the activity of civil socie-ty should be kept to a minimum. Th e local and central public authorities should abandon their intentions to set up an excessive control over the

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Advancement of democracy and good governance

NGOs activity. Th is trend is signalled by the last amendments to the Law on civic associations and the draft Law on Non-commercial Organi-sations of Public Utility.

Th e legal framework on cooperation between the state and civil society should be improved.

Approval of the Strategy for cooperation betwe-en the Parliambetwe-ent and civil society is a necessary step, but not suffi cient. Th ere is a pressing need to establish and implement a mechanism of co-operation between the executive authorities and civil society.

Th e legal framework on philanthropy and spon-sorship should be reformed and the law on 1%

should be promoted. In order to ensure the NGOs’ sustainability and increase their level of independence, the legislation on philanthropy and sponsorship should be improved. Th e most relevant action in this respect would be the ad-option of the Law on 1% based on the model of the new European democracies.

Th e authorities should promote public policies on “social requests” for NGOs, thus ensuring their fi nancial sustainability and diminishing dependence on foreign fi nancing.

Advancement of democracy and good governance Th e 2007 local elections were followed

with a special interest on both the internal and international levels. Th e manner in which these elections were conducted was a test of the level of democratisation of our state, in the context of commitments under-taken under the European Union – Republic of Moldova Action Plan (2005-2008). Th e mentioned document signed on 22 Febru-ary 2005 established as a priority aligning the election process to the OSCE and the Council of Europe (CoE) standards.

General evaluation. Th e International Election Observation Mission led by OSCE/

CRLPCE assessed the election legislation of the Republic of Moldova as one which

“ensures an adequate basis for conduct-ing democratic elections, to the extent it is implemented with good will”. Th e defi cit of

“good will” resulted in departure from the international rules and standards during the 2007 local elections. A number of additional remarks regarding the general aspects of the 2007 elections should be made:

Making the election debates mandatory and facilitating the accreditation of national and international observers generally had a positive eff ect. Nevertheless, the new management of the public audiovisual institutions failed to ensure fair access to the media.

Th e legal provisions designed to diminish mani-pulations resulted in undermining the principle of secret vote. In ¼ of the polling stations the procedures of counting the ballots and compu-ting the vote results have been less satisfactory or unsatisfactory due to insuffi cient professional training of the election offi cials appointed by the political parties.

Th e authorities and the ruling party structures put pressure on and intimidated a number of op-position candidates, thus aff ecting the citizens’

right to be elected to a public offi ce.

Compared to the 2005 elections, the number of constituents increased by 18,627 persons in 2007. Th is is due not to some demographic processes, but to the amend-ments to article 22 (g) of the Election Code, which provides that the Ministry of Infor-mational Development (MID) “shall ensure record of all constituents, including those

who are abroad and draw up the Constitu-ents Register formed on the basis of the State Register of Population”. Inconsistency of the mentioned data is due to inaccuracies caused by the local authorities upon draw-ing up the election lists. Th e number of con-stituents included in supplementary election lists was 84,202 or 3.8% in the second level election rayons and 5,799 or 6.7% in Gagau-zia. Overall, the number of constituents in-cluded in the supplementary election lists was 90,001 or 3.9% of the total. Th e accu-racy of election lists was higher than during the 2005 parliamentary elections, when 7%

of the constituents were included in supple-mentary lists.

Generally speaking, the citizens’ fun-damental right to vote was respected in a satisfactory manner. Th e citizens having the right to vote who did not fi nd themselves in the main lists were allowed, in conformity with the legislation, to vote on the basis of supplementary lists if they proved that they are citizens of the Republic of Moldova with the right to vote and reside in the respec-tive constituency. Very few cases of refusals to issue ballots were recorded, only in cases when the citizen concerned was not able to prove his/her right to vote in that specifi c polling station. Citizens of the Republic of Moldova residing in Transnistria did not vote in their localities because the uncon-stitutional authorities in the region opposed the elections. Constituents from three local-ities situated on the territory controlled by the separatists were included in supplemen-tary election lists in order to vote in Causeni electoral rayon of second level.

Ensuring equal conditions and oppor-tunities for all competitors. With a view of balancing the chances of electoral competi-tors with diff erent fi nancial and informa-tional potential, the CEC established: limits of the fi nancial means to be used; modali-ties of contracting and reimbursing credits;

uniform distribution of space for electoral advertising on public and private advertise-ment boards; distribution and use of election campaign time on the audiovisual channels.

Despite the provisions of election legislation