The Republic of Moldova for several centuries has been described as the poorest or one of the poorest states in Europe. In this connection, the logical continuation of this verdict, according to which the Moldovan village is the poorest all over Moldova – the poorest and most affected by problems and the most depopulated one, at least against the country’s towns and municipalities - should be as true. The amalgamation of localities could be one of the few general, not particular chances for the Moldovan villages to change this disagreeable status into a more decent, more optimistic and more attractive for living status. The legislative initiative that envisions the merger of two or more villages into one territorial-administrative unit, which was adopted by Parliament a week ago, seems to be this chance, at least in the view of the authorities that designed and promoted this initiative. The experts invited to IPN’s public debate “Amalgamation of localities as necessity, process and goal” discussed how real the chance is, who and what should do for this to materialize.
The permanent expert of IPN’s project Igor Boțan said that a week ago Parliament adopted the law on the voluntary amalgamation of the territorial-administrative units of the first level after giving it a final reading. The notion from this bill stipulates that voluntary amalgamation is the unprompted merger of two or more territorial-administrative units of the first level based on decisions by the local council, by obeying the conditions and procedures stipulated by the given law and the criteria, conditions and procedures stipulated by the voluntary amalgamation methodology and other normative documents.
“The second very important thing we need to realize is that the territorial-administrative organization of the Republic of Moldova, in accordance with the law on the administrative-territorial organization, is based on two levels. Under the given law, the villages, communes, towns and municipalities are of the first level, while the districts are of the second level of organization,” explained Igor Boțan.
Viorel Furdui, executive director of the Congress of Local Public Authorities of Moldova (CALM), doctor of law, said he is not sure that such a law was necessary. The government and the authors of this law consider the problem that there are too many localities, too many mayor’s offices and others should be solved. “I believe this problem is based on a wrong approach, when we say that the main problem of the Republic of Moldova and the public administration is the fact that we have a fragmented public administration system, have too many mayor’s offices, etc. From this viewpoint, things do not stand like this. Regrettably, we were persuaded that we have too many mayor’s offices, a fragmented system. But I want to tell everyone that the situation is different,“ stated the CALM director
Viorel Furdui noted that there are multiple examples of successful development of countries in which the territorial fragmentation is not placed at the forefront. Here, it goes to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria etc. Even France has a very fragmented territorial-administrative system, but they found solutions to overcome the problems.
The doctor of law made reference to the particularities of this region, which are somehow ignored. The region developed under a totalitarian system where local democracy didn’t exist and all things were decided at the central level. “For us, it is extremely important to return to local democracy when the communities have an elected representative mandated to represent the locality. What has happened in our country during the past 10-20 years, even the fact that lighting in villages was kept, was due to the existence of such a system,” said the CALM director.
Former MP Iurie Țap, expert in the public administration system, doctor of administrative sciences, ex-mayor of Florești town, said the voluntary amalgamation is a democratic method to solve the problem of organization of communities according to the principle of subsidiarity. This implies the bringing of services and decisions closer to the citizens. It goes to the nine conditions assumed by Moldova. Among these is the increasing of the capacity to promote reforms and offer public services by intensifying the local public administration reform. It also comes to the updating of the strategy for reforming the public administration. The goal of this document is to reform the public administration by decentralizing power.
“As an idea, this is better, but we need to see the realities. There are three objective problems and a subjective problem from the government’s perspective. Today, society in the Republic of Moldova is polarized. When it goes to voluntary amalgamation, the decision should reflect the citizens’ will. The question is, if this will could be manifested amidst this polarization? Another aspect is the number of parties that have local elected officials whom they regard as instruments for promoting the own interests at the local level. Evidently, most of these parties will divide the voters, as will do the local elites, those who hold posts and will eventually lose them, and also the economic elites that pursue particular goals. There are three major goals that could affect the voluntary amalgamation,” stated the ex-MP.
According to him, the objective factor is the fact that the reforms is now proposed in the absence of a powerful driving force, of a minister or a sector institution that would have a permanent dialogue with the local elected officials and the citizens.
The public debate entitled “Amalgamation of localities as necessity, process and goal” was the 288th installment of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
