In a meeting with the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly George Tsereteli, Prime Minister Pavel Filip took stock of the progress made in resolving the Transnistrian dispute by signing a number of protocol decisions, mentioning the ensuring of the proper functioning of Latin script schools on the left side of the Nistru, apostilling of diplomas in Tiraspol, ensuring of access of farmers from Dubăsari district to their farmland and admission of motor vehicles with neutral-design license plates to international traffic.

George Tsereteli welcomed the authorities’ firm commitment to organize free, fair and transparent elections by respecting all the international standards. In this regard, the Premier thanked the OSCE for its readiness to monitor the February 24 elections, underlining it is important for the team of observers to show objectivity.

The Head of the EU Delegation to Moldova Peter Michalko said the parliamentary elections will be an extraordinarily important test for assessing the state of democracy in Moldova. “From the viewpoint of the European Union, the importance of the February parliamentary elections was underlined for a number of times. These should be held in a transparent way, including a credible one, so that we could ascertain that the elections were free, fair and credible. This means that all the standards related to the electoral process should be respected before the elections. The candidates should be able to register and take part in the electoral process in an equal manner, including have equal access to the mass media,” stated the ambassador.

The government intends to increase a number of social allowances. The announcement was made by the leader of the Democratic Party Vlad Plahotniuc in a press briefing after the party’s weekly meeting. The politician said the relevant bills will be given a first reading by the current legislature at the start of this February and would be adopted by the future Parliament after the February 24 elections.

The electoral candidate on behalf of the bloc ACUM Ion Terguță in single-member constituency Nisporeni filed a challenge to the Central Election Commission (CEC) by which he demands to remove the leader of the Democratic Party Vlad Plahotniuc, who runs in the same constituency, from the electoral race. The challenge is based on a video of the PDM Forum held in Nisporeni district at the end of last December that was placed by the Democratic Party on youtube. According to Ion Terguţă, the video shows how the campaign to collect signatures in favor of Vlad Plahotniuc was actually conducted. A number of persons stayed with the subscription lists in front, while the signatories waited in a line and provided the identity cards for having the data from these included in the lists.

Socialist MPs on January 22 challenged in the Constitutional Court the January 18 Government decision on the establishment of polling places for the parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019.

MP Vlad Batrîncea said that by such a decision, the Government allowed excluding hundreds of thousands of Moldovans who live and work in Russia from the constitutional process. This is a serious case of constitutional discrimination against Moldovans who were derived of the possibility of voting.

An analysis carried out by the Center for Policies and Reforms, whose authors travelled to localities where roads were renovated as part of the program “Good Roads for Moldova”, says the public funds are used to pay more, but to purchase less and of a poor quality and the quality of the performed works is not checked. Public finances are allocated without assessing the impact of the investment or ensuring the continuity of this. The implementation of contracts is not monitored appropriately. As a result, the volume of executed works is lower than the contracted and paid volume. The deviations within the program can amount to tens of kilometers.

The Executive Board of the National Bank of Moldova decided to give the prior permission to “DOVERIE UNITED-HOLDING AD” for the acquisition of the shareholding of 63.89% of BC “Moldindconbank” S.A.

According to the central bank, “DOVERIE UNITED-HOLDING AD” is presented to be one of the most important companies in Bulgaria, which was founded in 1996 as a privatization fund with a participation portfolio in more than 20 economic enterprises that operate in a number of countries of the region.

The international “Generations and Gender” survey will be conducted in the Republic of Moldova for the first time. This will cover a sample of 10,000 people and will reveal the demographic tendencies and challenges. The results will be used to work out policies and deal with the problems faced in the field.

“The demographic situation in our country requires immediate action. This survey will help us develop policies and strategies to improve the situation and to correctly address the preoccupations of persons, families and society in general,” said secretary general of state at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection Boris Gîlca.

“We can have the best judges in the world, who would adopt the best decisions, but when the people perceive justice as non-independent, it means we have a problem,” said secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice Nicolae Eșanu.

He admitted that there are yet shortcomings in the justice sector and some of these are notorious. Nicolae Eșanu said the appointment of judges for a so-called trial period of five years, as it is provided in the Constriction, is the biggest flaw. “According to experts, when the judge does not enjoy stability in the held post, is not named for life and when taking a decision should think twice so that this decision does not influence his career is one of the biggest problems,” stated the jurist.

Ianuș Cușnir, executive director of the employers’ association “Associations of Condominium Co-owners”, said the land situated near 99% of the apartment buildings in Chisinau is public property. In such conditions, the dwellers associations are penalized without a legal reason. They are fined because they do not clean snow from the areas that legally do not belong to them.

Ianuș Cușnir also said that if the municipal authorities cannot clean the areas located near apartment blocks, they should transfer them to dwellers. In such conditions, the condominium associations, homebuilding cooperatives or privatized dwelling owners associations could annually agree a budget for cleanup. They cannot do this now as the given land does not belong to them.

Details on IPN!