“Expecting a year of pure happiness”. Commentary by Info-Prim Neo

On the first day of the last month of autumn, President Vladimir Voronin, accompanied by a large entourage of premiers, ministers and counselors, set foot in the City Hall. The announcement of this visit was barely made public, and the reporters that managed to find about the event were shown the door just five minutes later. Following the closed-door event, the press unit of the city hall released a communiqué, embodying cheerful statements on the meeting: on behalf of the interim mayor – gratefulness “for the interest shown by the leadership of the country for Chisinau-related issues”, and on behalf of President – contentment regarding “the preparedness of the municipality in what concerns the cold season, and other aspects”, as well as about “the efficient co-operation established between central and local authorities, allowing to urgently solve problems which concern the citizens”. A five-year plan in an electoral year According to the same press-release, room 13 of the city hall witnessed the approval of several matters: “the following projects are scheduled in Chisinau for 2007 – building the Moldovan Village “Buciumul”; building the Northern Station; designing and starting to build the Central Stadium; fitting out the banks of the Bic River between Puskin and Rares streets; building multi-storied parkings; finishing the municipal almshouse for elderly people and vagrant children; reconstructing the Valea Morilor rest zone; building roadways connecting Mircea cel Batran and Sadoveanu streets with Dimo and Studentilor; reconstructing the waste water treatment plant; renewing the engineering networks from Chisinau; building Dimitrie Cantemir Boulevard; building social residential spaces.” Full stop. There is a reason for itemizing the entire list of projects for the following year. Even during “the golden ages” when the capital city was afforded a bigger slice of public money, such amount of projects would have filled a five-year plan or more. Bearing in mind the nowadays scarce municipal budget, which shifts pieces from one place to another to fill the gaps, a natural question occurs: what kind of human and financial resources does the municipality have since it rushes that much? The question would seem less ridiculous if it would relate to another year, but not 2007, when communists will run the final fight for the total conquest of the municipality. As a good strategist and tactician, general Voronin, spread his forces along the whole front: the Parliament amended the legislation in order to avoid the failure of the voting, even if the tired population will not attend the polls, the army of Papuc arrested or initiated penal proceedings against several potential candidates for the chair of the mayor, the teammates of the odious Urecheanu have been removed from the City Hall, the potential inconvenient mayor, Mihai Furtuna, being eliminated from the game and replaced by the “obedient” Vasile Ursu. Vasile Ursu doesn’t have general’s epaulets, doesn’t master the military craft as his superior does, and lacks imagination at some point. If this wasn’t true, what would be the reason of the profound crisis he passes through, being unable to launch, in those 15 months of his activity as interim mayor, at least a personal original project economically and socially endorsed? In fact, let us be honest and admit that the ideas of “model districts” and that of cutting down poplars because they “produce down” are original enough, but this originality tends to become hilarious. Besides that, there is nothing else to speak about. The repairs of the Ismail Street which made the headlines of the triumphal reportages on the Independence Day and the Chisinau Temple’s Day, were started by Urecheanu. In fact, he chose the Parliament before finishing his numerous projects concerning the city’s modernization. Among these, there was a project of transforming the Bic River into an entertainment zone, with locks and little waterfalls; building the Cantemir boulevard, from the Ismail Street to the Sculeni crossroad, provided with a tunnel not to affect the historical centre of the capital; multi-storied parkings; etc. And, in order not to lose them, these projects have been collected by the interim Ursu, cleaned up of “political connotation” they had even from the name of the former mayor. They were adjusted to the actual national consensus and served as original ideas of his. Urecheanu’s projects are dead! Long live the projects of Ursu! Let’s take for example, the “Cantemir Boulevard” project. Year after year, Urecheanu have continuously pushed the file folder full of schemes, drafts, figures etc., from one table of negotiations with potential investors to another. The problems always appeared in the moment when foreigners were soliciting guarantees for the protection of their investments, a thing Urecheanu wasn’t able to secure, because he was persona non grata among central authorities; the City Hall was in a state of siege, and a besieged fortress does not offer any guarantees. For example, in September 2001, the representatives of the Spanish company “MP Engineering and projects” were entering the door of the Chisinau city hall ready to invest USD 150 mln in the Cantemir boulevard and its infrastructure, via remaking it into a main thoroughfare of the capital. Info-Prim wrote back then that “capital’s authorities hope that its reconstruction would reduce the tight traffic on the Stefan cel Mare Boulevard”. An enlargement of the boulevard along 3400 m was planned, the demolition of the old houses and building 10 apartment blocks of 9 stories. The parties even signed a collaboration agreement which was to be proposed for examination to the Municipal Council, the majority faction of which was also the communist one. There is no need to explain why this project wasn’t afforded green light. Two or so years later, on January 27, 2004, another team, representing the Switzerland-based “Fimtaden International” Company was visiting the Chisinau City Fall, announcing its intention to finance the same project. The representative of the company, Alain Benech, declared that in case the final project is presented in due time, the company would need at most 3 months in order to obtain the funds needed for its implementation. “I’m sure we will succeed in finding financers. Switzerland doesn’t want a poor country at the gates of the United Europe”, Alain Benech declared. From his part, mayor Urecheanu could only promise that municipal services would prepare the papers needed, and that plots on the both sides of the new boulevard, where social-intended institutions could be built, would serve as mortgage. The hardest part though, in Urecheanu’s belief, was to obtain the guarantee of the Government or the National Bank The fears of the former mayor proved to be true. The project of the “Cantemir bd.” could have died before its birth, unless the City Hall wouldn’t have reached the well-known “consensus”. Ursu made efforts to take it from the waste-paper basket, and to animate it, with help from the head of state who, not later than Tuesday, October 31, just a day before his visit to the City Hall, convened a meeting concerning the reconstruction of the boulevard. As part of the session, Vasile Ursu reported that the reconstruction of the thoroughfare “is planed to be operated on a length of 2,600 m, in the perimeter of the Ismail str and Mihai Viteazul str. Dimitrie Cantemir Boulevard is to become one of the main thoroughfares from the municipality of Chisinau and to relieve the Chisinau’s downtown from traffic, especially the Stefan cel Mare Boulevard”. Deja vu? Open to all the “positive ideas” of the City Hall, according to a press release from the presidency, Voronin not only “appreciated the importance of the reconstruction of this boulevard for the development and modernization of the capital”, but also “launched the idea of creating, as part of the City Hall, a special department which would deal with the implementation of the project, and in perspective - with the building or reconstruction of other thoroughfares in Chisinau”. These all after he minced the personnel of the City Hall, claiming the purpose of saving public money. According to the same press-release, the participants in the session also emphasized the necessity of “solving, in conformity with the legislation in force, all the problems that would appear in the process of implementation of this project”. It’s not hard to imagine what kind of problems may occur, once the bulldozer of the “building site of the century” will demolish a whole district of private houses from the center of the capital. Will anyone compensate the inhabitants the real cost of their properties or will they just be offered some spaces unequal as value, somewhere on the outskirts of the city just to keep them silent - this is not mentioned in any communiqué coming from presidency or the City Hall. Or maybe the problem will be solved much easier, in the manner shown by the president towards the inhabitants of another “shock building site” - Pan Halipa str: “Buzz off!”? Collaboration or encroachment? Despite the announced „consensus”, lots of voices are heard in the Municipal Council who believe this “efficient collaboration between central and local authorities” to be an encroachment in the public local autonomy, and “the rapid problem solving” – as fraudulent financing from public money of political and useless projects such as the “Eternitate” memorial, to the detriment of other projects, vital for inhabitants of the capital. The same scenario – a total control over the capital and its budget – includes the recent initiative of the PM Tarlev, who, winged by his boss, also gives an order to the City Hall: to “contribute” to the renovation of the block no 4 of the Municipal Urgency Hospital from Chisinau. Taking into consideration the fact that, for repairing a single hospital - “Sfanta Treime” – some MDL 19-20 mln are needed, while only MDL 14 mln were provided in the municipal budget for the repairs of all municipal medical institutions, we can conclude that the Prime Minister is ignores both the common sense and the law. He ought to know (himself being one of the authors) that at the end of 2004, the Urgency Hospital was shifted from the municipality under the Ministry of Health’s jurisdiction, in other words – in the direct subordination of the Executive he leads. But, as we mentioned earlier, we are expecting a rather uncommon year, in which “new achievements” are waiting for us – each of them having the aim to make us happy in a compulsory way. It doesn’t matter that they could end like the “model-districts” which, fallen out of the electoral background, are full of pits now… It is important that so little is requested from us! A vote in advance.