Development Program of Chisinau falls prey to hidden political interests

The Program on Chisinau Municipality’s social-economic development for 2007-2010 was excluded from the agenda of the Municipal Council’s meeting, held Thursday, October 12, due to the votes of Communists’ Party and PPCD factions. The debates on the issue revealed serious disagreements among the municipal councilors. The leader of PCRM faction, Svetlana Popa voiced a statement on behalf of her colleagues, requesting to exclude the matter due to the document’s alleged “doubtful quality”. According to the statement, the program’s social intention lacks financial coverage. Specifically, the faction is displeased with the facts that the matter of social dwellings is limited to mortgage crediting, and that the document lacks space for the Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper’s (EGPRSP) methods. Constantin Pasecinic, AMN councilor, has brought two kinds of counterarguments: he expressed puzzlement as to why the statement emerged after all the CMC’s commissions passed the Program. According to him, the problems tackled by the communists’ leader could be settled easier within the frameworks of the Program, which is in his belief “the first attempt over the past years to make things work and to settle a legal framework”. Pasecinic told reporters that the Program would halt or at least make detectable illegal interferences of central authorities in the internal affairs of the community, which are often based on political conjectures. “It is the local administration’s exclusive right to decide upon whereabouts of stadiums, routes of minibuses, and building sites”, Pasecinic concluded. Oleg Cernei, another AMN councilor, sees the communists’ request as a “vote of disapproval for vice-mayor Petru Svet”, responsible for preparing the Program and a PCRM representative. Cernei insisted on a parallel between this case and former vice-mayor Mihai Furtuna’s, dismissed at the request of PCRM faction for allegedly ill-preparing a draft on the budget for 2006. In turn, Svetlana Popa accused her opponents of “politicizing” the issue and requested sharp reproof for the Head of Economy and Reforms General Department, Valentina Merla. Recently, independent councilor Mihai Roscovan told Info-Prim Neo that one of the causes of infringements and financial frauds in the process of managing the municipal budget, disclosed by the Court of Accounts, is the habit to implement “ad-hoc” projects, such as “model districts”, “Eternity Memorial”, etc. Usually, these projects are not planned in the budget and are implemented due to a political order, and their financing disadvantage other projects or are loaned at high interest rates.