Draft law on Chisinau municipality’s status allows Council to directly interfere in City Hall’s work. Info-Prim Neo interview with ex-Mayor General of Chisinau Serafim Urecheanu, president of the Moldova Noastra Alliance Party

[ - Mr Urecheanu, the Government has recently approved the draft law on the status of the municipality of Chisinau, which has been expected since 2001. What do you think about its content?] - This draft law brings practically nothing new. However, it strengthens and legalizes, post-factum, the powers of the president of the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC) and of the already created apparatus of the CMC president – a body designed to undermine the work of the executive, of the Chisinau City Hall. I don’t understand the purpose of this body, which is not even a legal entity. The City Hall has sufficient bodies that can draft decisions for the CMC meetings. It is direct interference by the legislative in the executive’s work. The draft law materializes the ambitions of President Vladimir Voronin, who made real effort to destroy the public administration of the municipality of Chisinau and not only. Voronin is the one that made the local public administration inefficient in general. What happens today in Chisinau is an ambition of the Communists, who, reaching a compromise with Eduard Musuc after keeping him in jail for half a year, try to legalize all the violations they committed as regards the CMC president and the apparatus of the CMC president. [ - Why wasn’t this draft law approved earlier, in your opinion?] - The initial draft law gathered dust in the Parliament’s drawers for almost 8 years. It wasn’t adopted because in the past the Communists did not have the possibility of promoting their interests in the CMC. Instead, they denigrated the Mayor General of Chisinau, aimed to destroy the local public administration in Chisinau, and did not want to adequately treat the Mayor of Chisinau. The post of CMC president did not exist then and they introduced it in the law on the local public administration. While the post of CMC president had been held by Mihai Ghimpu, they did not want him to have an apparatus, additional powers, access to mass-media, etc. Now they want this and the draft law on the status of the municipality of Chisinau reappeared. It is obvious that the interests of the country’s administration result from the circumstances and the clan’s interests do not coincide with those of the ordinary people. I ask myself who needs this fight between the legislative and the executive in Chisinau, this open support for the CMC president and the denigration and total disregard for the Mayor General. We should not forget that the CMC president is elected by 26 councilors, while the Mayor General by the 560,000 voters that live in the municipality of Chisinau, with a majority vote. [ - Minister of Local Public Administration Valentin Guznac said that the draft law has been discussed with the City Hall, but Mayor General Dorin Chirtoaca says he was not consulted. Had you been consulted about this law when you were Mayor General of Chisinau?] - I have never been consulted about this. The initial law was drafted by the Government and sent to the Council of Europe for inspection, but had been kept secret from me for five years, the period during which I had been mayor and the country has been governed by Communists. I don’t think that the draft law was discussed with the acting mayors of Chisinau Iordan and Ursu, who were pawns and did not have this right as they were acting mayors, not mayors elected by the Chisinau residents. This last version of the draft law was examined neither by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE) of the Council of Europe nor the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission). So, it is a law formulated in a hurry in order to protect the interests of the communists and their acolytes.