The mayor of Chisinau Ion Ceban said the attacks against the City Hall and its employees have been stepped up the past two weeks. In his opinion, these are electoral actions of those who are in power. “Everyone understands that they alone create problems and then they take to the streets to protest. They use the people so cynically while committing illegalities and continue to rob as heavily,” Ion Ceban stated in the meeting of officials of municipal services. He noted that the real causes of the attacks are this year’s presidential election and the campaign that those who are in power have already started, IPN reports.

According to the mayor, the Chisinau City Hall will demand that 50% of the over 23 billion lei transferred by the residents of Chisinau as different types of contributions to the state budget should remain in the capital city, not just 13% or 2.8 billion, plus special purpose transfers.

“They intentionally deprive us of certain services and leave us absolutely irresponsibly without financial coverage and then they come to protest. The money that should be left to us will go to build roads and courtyards, infrastructure, transport, schools, kindergartens and many other social services,” stated Ion Ceban.

A number of protests were mounted in the recent past in front of Chisinau City Hall and these involved councilors of the Party of Action and Solidarity from the Chisinau Municipal Council. At them, personal assistants from Chisinau expressed their dissatisfaction with the order to dismiss a number of personal assistants and to halve the salaries of those who remained. The demonstrators also demanded that the municipality restore the free groups with extended hours for primary school students.