The local elections of this year should be held on September 5 at the latest. Though the legislation does not set a term for holding the ordinary general elections, by analogy with the norm of the parliamentary elections, the local elections should take place within three months of the expiration of the tenure of the local elected officials, the secretary of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Andrei Volentir has told IPN.

Under a Constitutional Court decision, the local general elections cannot take place before the expiration of the tenure of the local elected officials. That’s why elections cannot be held before June 5. “After this date, there is no time limit by which the local elections should take place. An analogy is drawn when the legal norms are not clear enough. By analogy, we reach the conclusion that the local elections should take place on September 5 at the latest, which is between June 5 and September 5 if observing a period of 60 days of the announcement of the election day,” stated Andrei Volentir.

The CEC secretary also said that since the norm does not clearly specify when the local elections should take place, hypothetically Parliament can set this date later than June 5, but this would be a dangerous precedent.

The electoral budget for 2015 totals 98 million lei for both of the rounds (69m lei for the first round and 29m lei for the second round). Three kinds of elections will take place the same day – mayoral elections (898 mayors), election of councils of the first level (898 councils), and election of district/municipal councils, of the second level (32 districts, Chisinau Municipal Council and Balti Council.

The last local general elections were held on June 5, 2011.