Press
CHISINAU MAYOR DISSATISFIED WITH ATMOSPHERE IN THE GOVERNING COALITION
The Deputy Chairman of the Liberal Party (LP), Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca, 31, is dissatisfied with how domestic relations in the governing Alliance for European Integration develop. He calls them lame.
Chirtoaca appeared on the ProTV-Chisinau channel on Monday night and voiced discontent that the AEI behaved so irresolutely at passing a whole number of essential laws that would help increase the efficiency of the Chisinau Primaria [city government].
He stated, “We all ought to act as one monolith party. Unfortunately, only the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democratic Party dispose of high state posts, which circumstance complicates joint governance”.
Chirtoaca referred to an example to substantiate his viewpoint: the AEI would stubbornly reject any concessions in the question of decentralization of the police so as to make the Chisinau municipal police responsible exclusively to the Chisinau Primaria. As a result, the law enforcement appear to be unable to resolve even the question of the notorious turnpike in the Ciocarliei street, where ex-president Voronin’s son Oleg presumably resides.
“The Ministry of the Interior has recognized its own incompetence in the issue, and refused to register the administrative offence. To resolve this paramount problem, the Interior Minister even had to invite the acting president [Mihai Ghimpu, LP Chairman and Chirtoaca’s uncle] to a special ministerial meeting”, the mayor said.
He thinks that the recent accusations of him as being incompetent, thrown to him by the Liberal Democratic Party leadership, “were their reaction to the truth I had said concerning the state of things in the governing alliance”.
Chirtoaca further held saying, “The General Commissar of Chisinau municipal police was appointed in contravention with the accord reached previously in the AEI. This position was to be given to the Liberal Party. I have already reported twice, and heard no objections, that the police officers who took part in the bruising of protesters in April 2009 have by now been reinstated in their positions – with the AEI’s assistance. Prime Minister Vlad Filat [LDPM Chairman] demanded from the Minister of the Interior the list of suspended officers so as to subsequently rehabilitate them little by little afterwards”.
Mayor Chirtoaca also believes that the AEI does not wish to revise the current tax legislation so as to rehabilitate a provision, cancelled in 2008 [by the Communists shortly after Chirtoaca’s becoming the Mayor of Chisinau], according to which Chisinau economic agents used to pay taxes to the Chisinau municipal budget.
“As a result, last 2 years the city has short-received 1.5 billion lei in tax revenues. Why don’t corporations pay taxes? Are they poorer than the grassroots?” wondered the mayor.
Chirtoaca explained the insults inflicted to him by Moldova Noastra Alliance Chairman MP Serafim Urechean [one of the four AEI leaders] – that “our mayor is spending all his time on dismantling turnpikes in the city” – with the fact that “ex-mayor Serafim Urechean himself issued gratuitously two hectares of land in the Ciocarliei street”.
