Clashes in Chisinau Council as its president wants own apparatus

The Chisinau councilors adopted the staff chart of the apparatus of the president of the Municipal Council (CMC) on July 31. It will have 7 employees. The decision was adopted with the votes of the councilors from PCRM, PPCD, PSD, PUM and Valery Climenco, and it was criticized by the other factions, Info-Prim Neo reports. The leader of the Liberal-Democrats in the CMC, Alexandru Tanase, voiced against the draft, saying an apparatus for the CMC president automatically would mean a change of the employees chart. He believes such a structure will create a conflict of competences between the general mayor and the CMC president's apparatus. “Placing the CMC's president in front of the executive power or in the same line with it is weird anyway,” the councilor said. The Liberal-Democrats' position was backed by the Moldova Noastra (AMN) councilors. “The draft is an attempt to institute a beaurocratic structure to control the CMC's activity,” said councilor Mihai Ciobanu. His faction colleague, Oleg Cernei, said that only the stipulations that the apparatus is an autonomous subdivision, has the statute of a legal entity, has assets, seal, fiscal account and logo prove that the draft aims to usurp the City Hall's power, destabilizing the situation in the municipality. The Liberal Mihai Ghimpu said the draft decision was a gross interference of the legislative branch into the powers of the executive one. Following debates, certain modifications were operated to the draft. The CMC's president's apparatus won't have a regulation, as only the employees chart was approved. At Thursday's session, the councilors instituted a commission to draft a new regulation for the CMC. They changed members in the commission distributing money from the reserve fund and the commission testing and authorizing the Chisinau administration's representatives in companies. The chairman of those commission is the CMC president, Eduard Musuc. The Liberal Party president Mihai Ghimpu showed his dissatisfaction with the draft decisions and with the fact that those commissions were not chaired by the general mayor: he is but an ordinary member. Angry, the Liberal councilors asked for the mayor to be ousted from those commissions in general. The idea stirred the dissatisfaction of other CMC factions. “In order to insure the good functioning and transparency of the those commissions, it is necessary that the mayor should also make part of them,” a Social-Democrat councilor, Emil Gutu, said. “It's not true, you want to use the mayor's name to do whatever you please,” Mihai Ghimpu responded. The councilors voted to oust the mayor from those commissions.