Tiraspol, 25 May. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. The Supreme Council has set a 25% minimum turnout for the presidential election. The MPs have not sustained the government, president and public organisations' arguments and passed the draft law minimising the turnout threshold.
According to the current law, the voter turnout must exceed 50% so that the presidential election could be recognised valid. And the minimum turnout at the parliamentary and local elections is set at 25%. Two weeks ago Supreme Council members proposed to reduce the «legitimacy threshold» for the presidential election. The main argument was the high rate of emigration from Pridnestrovie. Concerns are expressed in this respect that the turnout may not exceed 50% at the upcoming 2016 elections as was the case during the Supreme Council elections in November 2015.
The government did not back the reduction of the minimum turnout, arguing that it may damage the presidential legitimacy, and since Pridnestrovie is a presidential republic, the president must be elected by the majority of population.
President Yevgeny Shevchuk underscored, in turn, that the voter turnout at the presidential election used to be higher than that during the parliamentary elections. Thus, in 1991 the president was elected by 78% of voters, by 57.1% in 1996, by 62% in 2001, by 66.1% in 2006; the 2011 turnout was 58.88% in the first round and 52.46% in the second round of the presidential election.
At the same time, the head of state agreed to lawmakers' argument about a decrease in the number of voters and proposed a compromise variant — to set the minimum turnout at 40%. When making this proposal, Yevgeny Shevchuk proceeded form the official information about the turnout at the 2015 parliamentary elections, when 47% of registered voters came to the polls.
It should be noted that Tiraspol's public organisations have not backed the idea of reducing the minimum turnout.
But the first Pridnestrovian people's deputies have sided with the parliament and recommended the Supreme Council to abolish the turnout threshold at all by analogy with the Russian Federation.
Considering all positions in the second reading, parliamentarians decided to reject the submitted amendments and passed the law reducing the minimum turnout at the presidential elections to 25%. In the course of debate, however, MPs admitted they do not doubt citizens' activity at the presidential election and expect the turnout to exceed 60%.
