​SOCIALISTS AND LIBERALS SCUFFLE IN CHISINAU CITY HALL

Party of Socialists parliamentarians and Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca and his party comrades – municipal councilors representing the Liberal Party entered into a noisy scuffle in the Chisinau City Hall, where a working meeting of the Chisinau Municipal Council [city legislature] was to take place on Thursday.

Some 50 Socialists and party supporters gathered before the City Hall building and demanded immediate resignation of Mayor Chirtoaca and exclusion of land sale questions from the session agenda.

Employees of the Chisinau Primaria [city government] locked themselves up in their working rooms in the building, refusing to come out to talk to the protesters.

In about 20 minutes, the protesters, led by PSRM MPs Ion Cebanu and Grigore Novac, and in a company of Our Party leader Renato Usatii, entered the mayor’s reception room and demanded a meeting with him – now.

Renato Usatii was very angry with Municipal Council members, saying that “the councilors would not vote for hundreds of drafts and decisions pending since yet 2011-2012, and now they have decided to vote for 800 documents in one CMC meeting!”

Having waited for quite long in the reception room in the hope that Dorin Chirtoaca would come out, the protesters walked over to the session room where the Chisinau Municipal Council was supposed to gather for its final meeting before the local elections. They demanded to adjourn the CMC meeting.

Chirtoaca eventually appeared on site and called the Socialists’ actions as unlawful and ones upsetting the Council meeting.

“Respected Socialists, Chisinau and Moldova are too hard for you to chew. You will not manage it. It’s not your place here”, said Chirtoaca, adding, “If you are guests from Putin, then go and sit down over there in the balcony. But if not, then you are violators of the law”, stated the mayor in reply to the Socialists’ demand to put off the working meeting and withdraw land-related draft documents from the agenda.

Gradually, the two hostile camps began pushing each other, pulling by the sleeves etc. Fortunately, the scuffle did not go as far as fist fighting. Triumphant 36-year-old Mayor Chirtoaca stated proudly, “I am Batman. I am present here and there – everywhere and I am in time with everything. And you are Putin’s little puppets running somewhere under the tables”.

Socialist MP Ion Cebanu demanded from the Liberal mayor: “Is it Putin who has ruined roads in Chisinau? May be it is also Putin who thievishly distributes land plots in the capital city and blesses illicit construction? You have downgraded the once-flourishing city into a dirty criminal village, and you will find yourself in jail one day for all this”.

The verbal duels and the pushing session took about 2 hours, after which the CMC meeting was put off.