Representatives of the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM) call on all the election contenders and political forces to abide by the decentralization and local self-government objectives and to commit themselves to put these into goals into practice by signing a statement. This way the election runners will recognize decentralization as a legislative priority and will undertake to take concrete measures to consolidate local self-government in the Republic of Moldova.

In a news conference at IPN, CALM executive director Viorel Furdui said the local administration or local self-government is one of the pillars on which the real development of the country is based. “Without strong self-government based on the principles of decentralization, local self-government, sufficient resources, subsidiarity, we cannot have developed cities, municipalities or villages and a developed country, in accordance with people’s needs, in general,” stated Viorel Furdui, noting these aspects during many years have been neglected.

“We call on all the election contenders to recognize and include decentralization and local self-government as a top condition and priority for the development of villages and towns in the Republic of Moldova. We ask all the election runners to commit themselves to take definite measures to strengthen local organizational, institutional, financial, economic self-government,” said CALM president Tatiana Badan.

Mayor of Chisinau Ion Ceban, who is the vice president of the CALM, said they ask for the direct allocation into the local budgets of the income tax collected from legal entities in a given territory, in the amount of at least 10% for the budgets of the municipalities of Chisinau and Bălți, at least 15% for the budgets of the municipalities and district centers and at least 50% for the budgets of towns and villages. Also, the deductions from the income tax paid by private individuals for towns and municipalities should be raised from 50% to at least 75%. “We are not interested in the political affiliation, either green or yellow, blue or of another color. The problems for us all are the same. We therefore insistently ask that all the election contenders that take part in this campaign should publicly undertake this by signing the statement,” stated Ion Ceban.

The local elected authorities ask to ensure the local public administration’s right to own staff and remuneration policies, including to review the remuneration and stimulation system in accordance with the principles of local self-government so as to ensure sufficient guarantees and flexibility for fulfilling the legal duties. They also request to stimulate the process of delimiting, registering and assessing the municipal or local property, to depoliticize the national investment funds and distribute them according to objective criteria and to create a national fund for covering contributions for large infrastructure projects won by the local public authorities.

“Our call is simple, but painful. Dear politicians, a country cannot be prosperous with localities in a serious state of degradation and economic recession as the centralization process deprived the settlements of all the instruments and possibilities of developing. A country cannot be prosperous and with European objectives if the Moldovan villages do not have water, sewerage – things that are related to the human rights. A country cannot be developed if we do not have clear policies at the local level,” said the mayor of Telița village of Anenii Noi district Rodica Rusu.

“We come today to lend a hand to the future Parliament, the future Government, the political parties that will represent the country, either they are of the left or of the right. We want the problem of local self-government and economic, financial and other type of decentralization to be included in their political agenda,” said the mayor of Edineț, Constantin Cojocaru CALM vice president.

Mayor of Leova Alexandru Bujorean, CALM vice president, said it is very important for the political forces to realize that besides the fact that we live in such a nice country, we first of all live in local communities – villages, communes, towns, municipalities. The problems come from down to up and solutions to them can be provided also from down to up so that the burden borne by the central public administration is reduced. A condition is for the local public authorities to be offered powers, resources, capacities so that they do not have only obligations.

The representatives of the CALM called upon the election contestants and political parties to study the Congress’ proposals concerning the local public administration, decentralization and strengthening of local self-government and to sign the presented public call.