Chisinau Council of 1990s holds festive meeting 20 years after constitution

The councilors of the first Chisinau Municipal Council (1990-1995) on May 1 come together for an anniversary meeting 20 years after the council’s creation. The event took place at the Center of Culture and Art “Ginta Latina”. The 58 councilors who attended the meeting said they laid the basis of democracy in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. In 1990, the council was called the Soviet of People’s Deputies. It was renamed the Chisinau Municipal Council in 1991, said the chairman of the Association “Consiliul Municipal '90” Gheorghe Suruceanu. The former councilor said it is hard for him to compare the work of the first council and of the present one as the situation is different, but recommended the current councilors to fulfill the promises they made during the electoral campaign. “The democratic changes started in 1990. Among our first accomplishments were the removal of the monument to Lenin and the placement of the monument to Stephan the Great,” Gheorghe Suruceanu said, adding that the first council approved the coat of arms of the municipality of Chisinau and renamed more than 800 streets and parks. Titus Foiu, former municipal councilor and chairman of the industry commission, said the first councilors did many things for the society. “We were naive then and believed that everything we did will last for ever. But many things changed since then,” he said. A colleague of his, Petru Ungureanu, who headed the housing and transport commission, considers that no major progress has been made since the 1990s. He said that many problems related to the territorial development of the city, transport and roads have not been yet solved. Another former councilor, Grigore Fidelski said there were many patriots among the councilors of that period, but now their number decreased. The first council contributed to building democracy and strengthening the national identity, he stressed. Gheorghe Marzacu, spokesman for the council of the 1990s and one of the first press officers of the public institutions, said the local councilors who worked 20 years ago had to deal with the anti-national movement that was hindering the municipal authorities in their democratization efforts. “We fought hard and our struggle led to the Romanization of the municipal divisions. There were renamed streets and the Romanian language was accepted as working language at the City Hall instead of Russian,” Gheorghe Marzacu said. He also said that in the spring of 1992, the Chisinau City Hall staged a march called the Union March that ended in Bucharest on March 27. The public association “Consiliul Municipal ‘90” has 62 members.