On Monday, June 5, the Promo-LEX Association launched the 101.promolex.md platform – an alternative source of information about the activity of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova. The purpose of the platform is to increase the transparency and visibility of the supreme legislative authority, to improve its accountability and the accountability of its members, and to facilitate the interaction between them and society.
The platform has been created by Promo-LEX as part of its work of monitoring the Parliament, and it contains all available information about the activity of the current legislature and of each individual MP, which is synthesized, grouped, and presented in an interactive and accessible form. We believe that a democratic legislature should be transparent and should provide the general public with easy access to all information about its activity, interact with society, and involve citizens in legislative processes.
The platform 101.promolex.md offers several options to contact the Parliament, parliamentary committees, and MPs, including the possibility to directly ask them questions of public interest, the answer being the responsibility of the addressee.
Accessing the section “MPs”, you can find up-to-date data on each of the people’s representatives, including their CVs, contact details, and links to social media. It also shows the initiatives proposed by each MP, the way they vote, their attendance of plenary meetings, and all their statements of assets and personal interests submitted since the validation of their mandate. In order to ensure transparency and visibility, it is important to view the activity of each MP in part, because it is not based only on the activity of the faction to which they belong.
The section “Legislative activity” contains detailed information about the initiatives registered in the Parliament, including their authors, the areas to which they relate, and their status, i.e. at what stage of consideration they are. Any draft legislative act can be found easily and quickly by entering keywords into the search engine or by the date its registration. In “Legislative activity” you can also find information about standing committees, their composition, contact details, and details about the work of the committees monitored by Promo-LEX. You can also find out which are the instruments of parliamentary scrutiny and how they are used in the activity of the legislature.
On 101.promolex.md you can watch live plenary meetings or search, by date, the meeting that interests you. In “Publications” you can consult Parliament monitoring reports and other studies carried out by Promo-LEX, including policy documents on the activity of the legislature. In “News” you can find the summary of each plenary meeting that is analyzed by Promo-LEX experts from the perspective of transparency, legality, and efficiency of procedures.
By monitoring the activity of the Parliament, including its website, Promo-LEX has frequently found flaws. The Parliament’s website, which is its main channel of communication with society, publicly and proactively presents only a part of what would be needed for a truly transparent work, as information about the people’s elected officials is often incomplete or presented in a difficult-to-reach manner. For example, it does not contain the CVs and contact details of all MPs, their voting history and attendance of plenary meetings, questions and interpretations addressed to public institutions and answers to them, all statements of assets and personal interests of MPs, except for the last ones submitted.
In this context, we should recall that the Parliament approved, back in 2015, the concept of the e-Parliament Information System. It includes 3 components: electronic document circulation, e-voting, and the new Parliament website, which were to be implemented by mid-2019. Promo-LEX appreciates some progress that has been made, including the application of electronic voting, online scheduling of visits, and online submission of petitions, but considers it necessary to fully implement the e-Parliament concept, with all its components.
Please note that the official platforms of the Parliament, especially the website www.parlament.md, are primary sources, while 101.promolex.md is an alternative platform developed by Promo-LEX.
For the period 2021-2025, Promo-LEX aimed to monitor the activity of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, especially in terms of transparency, legality, and efficiency of procedures, as part of the program “Democracy, Transparency, and Accountability” financially supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The aim of monitoring is to improve the quality of decision-making processes, continually increasing the transparency of those processes and the accountability of the actors involved.