Twofold power in Chisinau Council

By the end of Friday, June 6, twofold power installed in the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC), Info-Prim Neo reports. A part of councilors go on considering as CMC president the Liberal leader Mihai Ghimpu, as others consider they have dismissed Ghimpu, and elected as chairman of the sitting the Communist councilor Alexandru Roman. By the end, each group chose a separate sitting hall. The CMC's extraordinary sitting has been convened by the Communists (PRCM) councilors. In the opening, the Social-Democratic faction leader Eduard Musuc read out a statement of his party, expressing dissatisfaction as to the situation in the municipality, and, respectively, in the CMC, jibing the Liberal Party (PL) and Mihai Ghimpu. The Christian-Humanist councilor, Oleg Oniscenco, put up a draft decision on dismissing Ghimpu. The draft was voted by 15 Communists, Christian-Democrats (PPCD), 5 Social-Democrats (PSD), 2 Christian-Humanists and Ravnopravie's Valeri Climenco, 27 in total. This group considered the president to be dismissed, while 19 councilors from other factions questioned the legality of the vote. Both made references to the Law on local administration, yet to different provisions from it. As the law does not expressly provide the number of votes needed for a dismissal, one group says a simple majority is enough, that is 26 votes, while the other group says 2/3 of votes are necessary, that is 35 votes. The present CMC is composed of 51 councilors. All the day long, they two groupings have jousted each other severely, even passing to physical skirmishes and direct threats. The councilors from the majority coalition accused the PSD colleagues of betrayal, saying the latter ones should assume all the responsibility for breaking the mechanism to run the capital, for ignoring the voters' wills, who voted for the democratic parties last summer. “You have opened Troy's gates, so that on your shoulders the PCRM – PPCD coalition enters the capital and they could even not appreciate your betrayal,” said the Moldova Noastra Alliance (AMN) councilor, Oleg Cernei. The opponent camp slammed the majority coalition, especially the PL and Mihai Ghimpu, accusing them of incompetence, inability and power usurpation. General Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca has assessed the move kicked off by the Communist faction as an attempt to isolate the democratic administration and has said he will notify the international organizations about the anarchy “promoted by the rulers in general”. On the background of the harsh invectives from both sides, the mayor cast his opponents the phrase: “You don't know the anger of this people of 20 years ago, and you'll know it.” [Info-Prim Neo’s note] After the first dissemination of the story, sources from the CMC council have told Info-Prim Neo the PCRM-PPCD-PSD coalition and others elected Eduard Musuc as the CMC president by 27 votes, while their opponents go on considering Mihai Ghimpu as president. The same sources say that at the separate sitting of the new coalition the CMC secretary was not present. The sitting is to continue on Tuesday, 10 June.