Moldovan parliament to try elect national president

The ruling Communist Party has nominated two candidates for the presidential office -- incumbent Prime Minister Zinaida Greceanii and academician Stanislav Gropa. Should the election attempt prove successful, the new head of state will replace President Vladimir Voronin, the Communist Party leader who rounds up the second and last term of office and whom the MPs elected parliament speaker May 12. While Greceanii was named by a plenary session of the Communist Party's governing bodies, Dr Gropa was nominated by a group of 15 Communists and experts say his nomination was but a mere formality, as the Moldovan Constitution requires that a president be elected on a competitive basis. In the meantime, the leaders of three oppositionist parties that managed to get seats in parliament in the April 5 election -- the Liberal Party, Liberal-Democratic Party and Alianta Moldova Noastra /Our Moldova Alliance/ -- refused to nominate any candidates on their part and warned that their parties would boycott the election. Their warning imparts an additional intrigue to the situation, as the Communists have 60 seats in the 101-seat parliament, while to elect a president a minimum of 61 votes are needed. This means the Communist Party will have to come to terms with at least some of the oppositionists. If the parliament fails to elect a new president at two attempts through to June 7, it will be dissolved and a new election will be held then. To prevent this awkward turn of the situation, the authorities have opened talks with the opposition, offering it the posts of the parliament's deputy speaker and chairmen of four of the ten parliamentary commissions. Signs indicate, however, that these netogiations have been unsuccessful so far, as the oppositionist parties functionaries came up with assusations the day before the election, saying that the authorities tried to lure separate oppositionist candidates into cooperation with the Communist majority. Veaceslav Untila, the vice-chairman of Alianta Moldova Noastra dismissed the Communists' efforts to bolster the election as unacceptable methods. If the attempt to elect the new president fails Wednesday, a runoff will be held in fifteen days' time, Kazinform cites ITAR-TASS. See www.itar-tass.com for full version.