The inhabitants of Chirca village in Anenii Noi district threaten to block the railway if the independent candidate Mihai Ganea is removed from the electoral lists. The Central Election Commission (CEC), which was to announce the date of rerun elections in the settlement at its meeting of August 21, decided to return to this issue in a week as the votes of the CEC members over the fate of the electoral candidate were equal. The CEC secretary Iurie Ciocan proposed that the rerun elections be held on September 9. He said that the electoral bureaus should have a new composition and the independent candidate Mihai Ganea should be excluded from the lists. Ciocan made reference to the decision of the Civil Board of the Court of Appeal Bender, which left the earlier decision about the invalidation of the elections in force and found Ganea as well as the members of the bureau guilty of electoral irregularities. The secretary was backed by three of the eight members present at the meeting: Valentin Vizant, Victor Kostetski and Pavel Midrigan. Renata Lapti, Mihai Busuleac, Vasile Gafton and Nicolae Garbu voted against excluding the independent candidate from the list, invoking the presumption of innocence provided in the Constitution of Moldova. According to them, the guilt can be proven at an administrative or criminal trial, but not by the decision of a civil court. Mihai Ganea, who attended the meeting of the CEC, denied all the accusations brought against him, saying he did not have the possibility of testifying in the court and the evidence was fabricated. He also said that the candidate for mayor on behalf of the Communist Party is interested in his exclusion from the electoral race. The residents of Chirca village, who accompanied Ganea at the meeting, as well as councilors of the Moldova Noastra Alliance threatened they will block the railway if the Commission does not satisfy the request of the about 400 voters that supported Mihai Ganea in elections and decides to remove him from the lists. On 3 July 2007, the Court of Appeal Bender invalidated the elections in Chirca village owing to a number of irregularities discovered, including the taking out of the electoral registers and of stamps “voted” out of the polling station. The independent candidate Mihai Ganea was found guilty of carrying out electoral propaganda and of transporting voters to the polling station. The Civil Board of the Court of Appeal Bender as well as the Supreme Court of Justice left the decision to invalidate the elections in force.