Election fever grips Communist authorities

Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev Wednesday called on the ministers and administrations of other state institutions to make a determined effort in 2008 and implement the executive’s program of activity because this year is a decisive year for the government. Vasile Tarlev said that first of all the gasification of all the settlements should be completed, the public road development and rehabilitation programme should be continued, the railway road Giurgiulesti – Cahul should be put in commission and the passenger and goods port opened. Conditions should be created to ensure the smooth running of Giurgiulesti terminal. The Premier said that among the strategic tasks are the creation of 300,000 new workplaces by reviving the enterprises and creating the necessary conditions of activity for rural businesses and industrial and scientific-technological parks, and the obtaining of an average salary of 300 USD in economy in 2009. He stressed the necessity of trebling pensions and salaries in the budgetary sphere, doubling the number of places of study financed from the budget, tripling student awards and implementing the president’s initiative to create attractive conditions for young specialists by providing advantageous conditions for building houses in rural areas. Vasile Tarlev underlined that the notions of minimum consumer basket or of minimum subsistence level should disappear, stressing that these are outdated and speculative and Moldova should implement the EU standards not old notions that do not correspond to the reality. Also, this year the Government aims to double the minimum guaranteed package of medical services, to initiate the second stage of reimbursing money deposits to elderly people, especially the participants in the Second World War. According to the Premier, the Government will focus on the implementation of the National Development Strategy. 2008 is expected to become a turning year in the development of the system for implementing court decisions. “Though our mass media broadly reports on the Strasbourg Court’s decisions with the help of so-called experts, the damages pay under the ECHR’s decisions are not larger than those paid by the neighboring states or other countries,” Vasile Tarlev said. He underlined the necessity of imposing sanctions on the persons to blame for Moldova’s convictions in the European Court and of making everything possible to reduce the number of cases lodged with the Court. He instructed the Ministry of Justice to take radical action so that the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages sustained by the state are refunded by the persons to blame. At foreign level, the Government will take steps to implement the European standards in all the areas of activity in Moldova. Actions will be taken to sign a new agreement with the EU that, as the Premier said, will improve the relations between Moldova and the European Union. Another objective concerns the successful holding by Moldova of the presidency of four European organizations – the Central European Free Trade Agreements, the Central European Initiative, the Southeast European Cooperation Process and the Multinational Consultative Group. The diplomatic relations with all the EU states must be developed, including by creating the necessary technical-material basis and conditions of activity for the diplomatic missions according to a special programme for acquiring buildings for embassies, and by stimulating the activity of diplomatic missions. The Premier said that effort should be made to promote the Moldovan products on the foreign markets and to broadly report on the advantages offered by the normative framework on asymmetric trade. Though the balance-of-trade deficit is still worrisome, the Premier said that 80% of the imported goods are goods that are not produced in Moldova like the gas, electricity, oil. “We must not relax yet, but take definite measures in the area,” Tarlev said quoted by Info-Prim Neo.