Drafting of Chisinau Status Bill has been coordinated with local authorities, ministry says

The elaboration of the draft Law on Chisinau’s Status has been coordinated with the local authorities, the Ministry of Local Administration declared today, in response to a feature story published by Info-Prim Neo on October 31, where several faction leaders alleged that the coordination hadn’t been actually done. “In this regard, we wish to recall that the Ministry of Local Public Administration presented the draft Law for approval to the Chisinau City Hall on 10.12.2007. The approval note (#02-18/9060), signed by Mr. Dorin Chirtoaca, Mayor General of Chisinau municipality, was submitted to the Ministry on 21.03.2008”, the ministry said on its webpage. The ministry further asserts: “In drafting the bill, there were taken into account all the objections and applicable suggestions of the Chisinau City Hall and the relevant governmental agencies (the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior Affairs, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Construction and Territorial Development, the Agency for Land and Cadastre, the Center for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption)”. Earlier, Info-Prim Neo interviewed a number of relevant actors on the draft Law in question. That is what Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca said: “We haven’t received any proposal over the draft law latterly. The bill has been on the Government’s agenda for several years. Consultations might have been held earlier, before the 2007 local elections. But this is done only for the sake of conventionality (…) and no suggestions are taken into account actually”. Ex-mayor Serafim Urecheanu said: “I have never been consulted about this. The initial version was drafted by the Government and sent to the Council of Europe for expert assent, but had been kept secret from me for five years, the period during which I had been mayor and the country has been governed by Communists.” Svetlana Popa, leader of the Communist faction in the Chisinau City Council, has stated that the faction has a couple of proposals to add to the draft, but refused to name them. Corina Fusu, the leader of the Liberal faction (PL), has said the draft has not been consulted within the faction. However she says the draft is apparently good. “But sometimes a good draft, after it undergoes amending, can turn into a law altering in fact the essence of the draft”. Councilor Oleg Cernei of AMN said that the document “is not the one initially drafted by the Ministry of Local Administration, submitted to the Council of Europe for expert assent, and approved by the City Hall”. Councilor Emil Gutu, Social Democrat faction leader, said that “all the faction leaders got the draft copies last spring, but the mayor did not want to learn the CMC factions' opinion”. According to the leader of the PPCD faction (Christian Democrats), Alexandru Corduneanu, “once (the draft law) published, anybody can come up with offers.” “Probably the municipality should be more insistent in this respect.” The leader of the PLDM faction in the CMC, Alexandru Tanase, described the bill as being “very poor” and containing “more contradictions than regulations”, Oleg Oniscenco, the Humanist Faction leader, says: ““I have heard that many proposals are rejected and many MPs do not have the final version, what is a lack of transparency”.