MPs say they will work during vacation too

The spring-summer session of the Parliament is close to an end. The lawmakers of the Alliance for European Integration have not yet set the date of the last sitting, but say they will continue working even if the legislative body goes on vacation. Initially, it was planned that the last sitting will take place on July 16, but the session was extended owing to the floods that hit the county. Under the Parliament’s regulations, the spring-summer session closes with a sitting where the Speaker presents a performance report and the leaders of the parliamentary groups deliver speeches. A part of the MPs told Info-Prim Neo the current session was productive. There were adopted new laws and improved older ones. A number of laws were adjusted to the European legislation. Liberal MP Valeriu Munteanu regrets that the Communist opposition hasn’t attended the sittings for several months. “The criticism in the Parliament is beneficial. Our work wasn’t perfect and we have yet a lot to do,” he said. The leader of the Liberal faction Ion Hadarca considers the Parliament could have worked better if the Communists had not issued ultimatums and imposed different torpedoing scenarios. Deputy Speaker Iurie Tap, a Liberal-Democrat MP, said the lawmakers did good work, but the parliamentary control leaves much to be desired. The Communist MPs did not attend the sittings and the legislative body’s work was prejudiced. “The MPs are elected to work in Parliament,” he said. MP Iurie Colesnic, who represents the European Action Movement, told Info-Prim Neo that a number of bills submitted long ago, in 2001, had been passed. “The Communists did not come and we were not hindered in our work,” he said. According to Vladimir Turcan, the leader of the group of MPs representing the United Moldova Party, the current session was the funniest one. He said that owing to the political misunderstandings provoked mainly by Speaker Mihai Ghimpu, the MPs forgot what they have to do in a period of crisis. “Not all the items from the agenda have been discussed. We focused primarily on settling of accounts,” he said. Communist MP Igor Dodon said the number of sittings and bills adopted during the current session is much lower than in the previous session. As the quorum was not present, the number of sittings was two times lower. “The Communist faction boycotted the sittings because none of our proposals had been accepted,” he said. Asked if the faction will attend the last sitting of the session, Dodon said it will probably not. The Parliament will resume work after the September 5 constitutional referendum.