Parliament is a helpless annex to Communists Party - Oleg Serebrian

Parliament came to be a imitative tool and a helpless annex to the Communists’ Party, the leader of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), Oleg Serebrian told a pres conference on Monday, February19, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to Serebrian, the collective body which actually leads Moldova is the Central Committee (CC) of the Communists’ Party (PCRM). Nowadays, Parliament identifies with the former Supreme Soviet, which was a formal structure, led by the CC, the quoted source asserts. The examples brought by Serebrian include the repeated violations of the legislation committed by the Legislature’s leadership concerning the including in the agenda bills proposed by the opposition. According to the law, the procedure of debating draft laws in committees and their expertise should last at most a month and a half, while 6 bills proposed by PSL are not included in the agenda even after a year. Serebrian claims that this is the fate of several draft laws proposed by the opposition and their ideas are later utilised in the communists’ faction bills as if they were their own creation. PSL leader asserts that communist MPs are favoured by the Parliament’s leadership and staff. According to him, some of the MPs operate visits abroad to the party’s interests, benefiting, though, from daily allowances from the Parliament’s budget, which became the staff controlled by PCRM. Another issue which discredits the Legislature’s image is its extreme politicising. According to the PSL leader, 60 percent of the Parliament’s staff, from janitors to counsellors, are PCRM members. Moreover, the personnel of the Parliament’s Legal Department, headed by Ion Creanga, is 100 % communist. Given these conditions, Serebrian doubts about the objectiveness of these employees as well as about the fact that, if needed, they would offer equidistant consultations to all of the MPs. Serebrian says that on Thursday, within the parliamentary session, he will solicit the creation of a committee for verifying the violations of legislation and even the offences committed by some of the MPs and Legislature’s employees concerning the utilisation of the living space and the Parliament’s cars. According to him, communists use the cars belonging to the Legislature for fulfilling orders of the party and personal travels. At the same time, in the Parliament’s house-hotel, the opposition holds only a few of the 29 apartments, including those of the MPs Igor Clipii and Valentina Stratulat, who do not own living space in Chisinau. Although the apartments in the respective building are allotted to the MP for a 4 year period of the mandate, at present some apartments are occupied by former MPs, the children of the former Ambassador of Moldova in France Andrei Neguta, deputy minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, minister of Social Protection and 2 apartments are rented. Both Oleg Serebrian and Igor Klipii, who was present at the press conference, stated that it is practically impossible to obtain information concerning the violations admitted within the Parliament. However, they succeeded to find out about the expenses for the repairs of these houses, which are enormous. At the same time, some of the communist MPs, including the faction’s leader Eugenia Ostapciuc registered to a list for an advantageous mortgage, with USD 310 for a sq m. Being aware of the fact that communist MPs will not accept the creation of the verification commission, PSL leader stated that he will insist upon the creation of an ad-hoc opposition commission in order to investigate the situation within the Legislature.