Dismissing Chisinau Council President not included on agenda

The issue of sacking the president of the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC,) Mihai Ghimpu, has not been included into the order of the day of Monday’s sitting. The contradicting talks on the issue continued for more than an hour after the councilors returned from lunch. After councilor Oleg Oniscenco proposed to include that issue into the order of the day, the sitting was interrupted for about one hour. After coming back to the floor, other factions wanted to express their stance on the matter. The Christian-Democrats’ leader, Alexandru Corduneanu, has said the CMC is not functional and this is because several evident principles were broken – the majority should have been a wide one, with the participation of the Christian-Democrats and Humanists, who should have assumed a ruling program. Excluding the Christian-Democrats from the coalition is a fatal thing, Corduneanu has mentioned. Communist councilor Valery Pavlov has stated it was unavoidable not to reach the situation when the CMC’s work is blocked, because the present councilors do not guide themselves by well-established principles, but by own or party interests. The majority coalition does not have a joint program, and Mihai Ghimpu cannot cope with the position he has. The non-functionality of the CMC is negatively influencing the work of the City Hall, too. Pavlov opines all the councilors should resign. The leader of the Moldova Noastra Alliance faction, Pavel Caba has supported Ghimpu. He says nobody can deny there are problems in the work of the CMC, but they have always been there. Yet often the problems are provoked by councilors themselves, by not knowing what to discuss, and not always do they word correctly what they want. He has called on councilors to mutual understanding and cooperation. Before voting for the issue, the Moldova Noastra and the Social-Democrat councilors said they wouldn’t take part in voting. 19 councilors (the Communist faction, two Christian-Humanists and Valeri Climenco from “Ravnopravie”) voted to introduce the matter into the order of the day. The Liberal Party and two independent councilors have voted against, and the Christian-Democrats have abstained. Mihai Ghimpu has announced the issue was not in the agenda for not gathering the necessary number of votes. The decision was questioned by the councilors who voted for it. According to them, since 11 councilors have not taken part in voting, 19 votes would be enough to introduce the issue into the order of the day. Yet the councilors proceeded to considering the order of the day without discussing Mihai Ghimpu’s dismissal.