President harshly criticize mayor and minister

If only one “nail” from an education institution will be privatized again, this will be used for nailing “the political coffin” of the responsible civil servants. This warning was aimed at the interim Mayor of Chisinau, Vasile Ursu, and the Minister of education, Victor Tvircun, and was voiced by the President Vladimir Vornin during a meeting convened on Saturday, July 8, related to preventing and fighting corruption. Central public authorities, legal and judiciary bodies members participated in the meeting. Reporters could attend the works only during the first half hour, the doors being closed for the next hour. The head of state, quoted by Info-Prim Neo, has harshly criticized the Government and other central public authorities. According to him, the criticism aims at all those who “suck up the state property”, jeopardizing national interests. Voronin stated that corruption is a widely spread phenomenon in education, from kindergartens to universities. “Tvircun is concerned about privatizing the Capital’s kindergartens and thinks about how to delay, the second or the third time already, the approval of the Law on education institutions’ accreditation,” in this way favoring certain businessmen. He criticized the way financial resources coming from tuition fees are collected and managed, terming it as “latent corruption, because money is taken, students are made fun of, and eventually these get false certificates and no knowledge.” The head of state declared that the Ministry of education has puzzled everybody with the Bologna Process, though the quality of the studies is continuously dropping. President says that 80% of the country’s bartenders are graduates of those 8 law schools of the republic. He stated that he has repeatedly urged for a partnership between the ministries of Economy and of Education in order to establish the number of specialists the country needs on a long term and to autonomously decide on the number of students. According to the president, the legal framework contains elements facilitating corruptions, blaming in this way the Parliament and the Government of lacking an efficient system of cooperation. He gave understand that his demands about organizing of a Law Creation Center were repeatedly delayed. The Parliament receives bills from the Government in an obsolete manner, without taking into account the European integration perspective, and without an anti-corruption expertise neither. If the legislation will not improve, the fighting against corruption will fail too. The head of state reproved the way the “guillotine law” is executed, this being the cause many norms work improperly and the level of human interference keeps being exaggeratedly high. If these impediments are still standing this means that either the civil servants are corrupted, or they are poor specialists. Voronin gave, as he says, eloquent examples of several ministries, attacking their managers with harsh criticism. In this regard, Voronin expressed concern related to the Parliament discussions about the possibility of permitting to private education organizations to teach in medical state institutions, this being termed as corruption acts. He alleges that some of the MPs who have previously run privatization institutions managed to acquire drugstores and other businesses and now seek for ways of utilizing the “stolen capital”. Presidents’ criticism attacked as well Premier Vasile Tarlev, minister of finance Mihail Pop, minister of economy and commerce Valeriu Lazar, and other high-ranking officials. Voronin underlined that after his meeting with the Cabinet, on April 28, 59 penal proceedings were instituted for corruption in several ministries and departments. The damages were estimated at MDL 14,6 mil. The real problem is that the causes leading to corruption weren’t eliminated yet. Prime Minister Tarlev has told reporters at the end of the meeting that no dismissals are planned so far, although the ones who feel the need, may leave by themselves. He stated that an action plan will be drafted involving responsible persons and tough measures will be undertaken. Tarlev qualified the governmental team as efficient, concerned about corruption phenomena, “this is because of these everyone has to suffer.” The head of the executive expressed dissatisfaction with the results of implementing the National Strategy for Fighting Corruption, these being the very reason for convening the meeting. He mentioned that the most criticized was the mechanism of public acquisition for its lack of transparency. At the same time, inspection bodies were criticized for frequently bothering economic agents baseless. The head of state and the premier stated that corruption is a menace to Eurointegration and to the Moldovan independence.