City Council meeting ends before it really begins, deadlock deepens

The Chisinau councilors failed on Thursday to agree on the order of the day and ended their meeting before it really started, making it the fourth consecutive unsuccessful attempt to hold a City Council's sitting. The meeting was interrupted minutes after its formal start when the councilors took a 5 minutes break, which in fact lasted nearly an hour. Returned to the assembly hall, the councilors started a fight which eventually put an end to the meeting. This time the reason for the discord was a proposal by councilor Oleg Oniscenco to deprive the councilors who won seats in Parliament of their seats in the Council. The Liberal faction strongly opposed the proposal, since it would mean that five of its councilors would have to leave the Council before they can be replaced by someone else from the Liberal Party. Councilor Pavel Caba, the leader of the Moldova Noastra Alliance (AMN) faction, observed that seeking the ousting of some councilors without letting others in (and, indeed, the Christian Democratic faction said it would boycott the vote for handing out new mandates) would greatly benefit the Communists and their allies, who will gain a comfortable majority in the Council. AMN councilor Oleg Cernei added that those who will oppose the vote for accepting new members of the Council will have to assume responsibility for the deadlock. But that wasn't the single issue that stirred things up at the Council. “Because the order of the day, which was adopted by the majority formed in the Council – the factions of the Communists Party, of the Christian Democratic Party, and of the Humanist Party – missed out the most important issues, and namely, the critical situation at the Chisinau Water Agency, the Municipal Bus Company, the Electric Transport Division, the draft municipal budget, regulations concerning capital repairs and others, our faction chooses to leave the assembly hall”, announced Liberal councilor Ion Ciobanu. Communist faction leader, councilor Svetlana Popa, complained “the projects proposed by the Mayor to be included into the order of the day are not complete”. “They suggest raising the tariffs, without offering alternative solutions to overcome the troubles”, said Popa.