ELECTORAL PERIOD STARTS IN MOLDOVA

The Central Election Commission (CEC) announced the beginning of the pre-election period on choosing local administration bodies starting from August 19. It also approved the calendar plan of activities, connected with the upcoming elections.

According to the plan, the formation of territorial election commissions started on Monday. They will begin issuing signature lists for raising signatures for registering independent candidates starting from August 30. Documents may be submitted for registration till September 19, and not more than 7 days are given for registration since the day of document submitting. The candidate registration will last till September 26. The election campaign for each candidate starts since the moment of registration.

At the October 20 local elections people will be electing 898 mayors and 11,580 local councilors, 1,108 of which are raion/municipal councilors, while 10,472 village and town councilors. According to the CEC instruction, the number of councilors is established on the basis of the number of residents in the administrative-territorial entity as of January 1 of the electoral year.

In Chisinau the municipal council will be made of 51 councilors. Most of village and town councils will get 11 mandates each. 27 councilors will be elected in each of 5 localities of the first level: municipalities of Orhei, Soroca, Ungheni, Comrat and Cahul.