Soviet system with 5 regions in Chisinau without prospect - Vladimir Şarban. Info-Prim Neo analysis.

The secretary of the municipal council of Chisinau, jurist Vladimir Sarban stated that the soviet system with 5 regions in Chisinau is without any prospect, mainly because several regions cannot cover their own necessities from the resources found under their administration. The changes applied to the Law nr.123-XV from March 18 2003 regarding local public administration, recently voted by the Parliament; do not determine an explicit juridical status to the regions of the city. In the article 110 of the Constitution of Republic of Moldova it is clearly stated that Moldova is partitioned in terms of territorial administration into villages, communes, cities that can become municipals, but there is no mention of a territorial unit with the status of “region”. A simple change of the administration structure of the municipality is not the key to proper management of the city’s resources, what is really necessary is a thorough delimitation of the authority of the City Hall and the regional administration, a requirement not fulfilled by the current changes. Moreover, the current administration system is terribly different from that from the 80’s of the last century. In the past, regions had budgets, collected taxes and invested in constructions or other required activities, but today more than 75% of the regional budget is handed over to the state budget, stated Sarban. Besides, a sector like Botanica, the biggest residential area of the city, cannot be compared with Central region, which holds all the economic agents. Vladimir Sarban claims that the reason to switch that regional division in the past was caused by the need to gather financial resources and manage them more efficiently when it comes to big projects, like the reconstruction of Ismail and Ciuflea streets, the repair of the 100 km aqueduct etc. The biggest issue in the problem of Chisinau management is the fact that the system is not rationally divided in terms of competence among structures, Vladimir Şarban declared. “The term sector can be changed into region, praetors can be called mayors. The City Hall named General City Hall, yet the general situation will not change until every structure has a well defined place in the municipal government”, the quoted source announced. There are also inconsistencies in the foresights of the Law regarding local public administration and the Law regarding the status on Chisinau Municipality from 1995. The latter was not changed for some time, and therefore there are a number of disagreements between them. The secretary of the municipal Council claims that the Municipality has elaborated the project for the new Law for status of Chisinau some time ago, discussed the necessity of the implementation of this law with the former representative of the communist party in the Council, Mr. Valeri Pavlov, yet there was no action taken, and the project wasn’t neither examined, nor voted. The need for change in this law is also due to the fact that the structure of the Chisinau’s management is unique and differs from the ruling structures from other regions of Moldova, meaning that the municipal council has authority both over territorial entities of the 2nd degree, like regions, and over entities of the first degree, like villages and communes. Vladimir Şarban acknowledges that these pessimistic foresights could prove wrong if along with the changes already announced, there will also be a change in the financing of the municipal needs, meaning that only 50% from the taxes will be given to the state budget. In conclusion, every ruling system has the right to exist, yet the reliability of the system forwarded by the changes in the local public administration system has to be proven in time. The main idea still is the delimitation between of responsibilities and rights, and to ensure equilibrium is achieved between requirements and possibilities of human, financial and logistic resources. [Info-Prim Neo specifies:] The Law nr.123-XV regarding changes to the local public administration was published on August 18 2006. According to these changes, Chisinau will have a City Hall and a Municipal Council, 5 regional councils, one General Mayor and 4 vice-mayors, and one mayor with 2 vice-mayors per region. The General Mayor, the regional Mayors, the Municipal Council and local councils will be elected through general elections. The changes will come into effect as of the local elections from 2007.