The Draft Law links tightly candidatures to parties (Article 10). Article 53.1 establishes that the party can nominate a person, who is a member of this party or non-partisan. This respects the principle of not requiring persons to be members of parties to stand for office. However, the problem is that only parties may present candidatures and this raises some additional limitations: Paragraph 7.5 of the OSCE Copenhagen Document recognizes the “right of citizens to seek political or public office, individually or as representatives of political parties or organisations, without discrimination”. Whilst the option for a “democracy of parties” is totally congruent with European standards, the Draft law should include provisions that ease the eligibility of citizens, without diminishing the option for structured candidatures. Hence, the possibility of having candidatures which respond to the model of coalition of voters under the same requirements of submission of candidatures as standard political parties will contribute to enhance fairness of electoral process This requires changes in article 10.2.
