Parliament carries budgets of Audit Office, CEC and Constitutional Court

The legislative body adopted the budgets of the Audit Office, the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Constitutional Court for next year. Compared with this year, they are all larger. The Communist MPs voted against the draft budget laws, saying the Alliance for European Integration raises only the budgets of the docile institutions, Info-Prim Neo reports. The Audit Office will have a budget of over 30.163 million lei, up 11% compared with this year. The Constitutional Court’s budget will be 10.982 million lei, while of the CEC – 13.240 million lei. “You have money to increase the budgets of the institutions that are obedient to the alliance and bureaucrats’ salaries, but you don’t have money for social problems. The Audit Office will be efficient only when it is controlled by the opposition. Today it serves the interests of the alliance. We cannot say whether it works well or not. There is no security. They rob the country and we increase the budget’s institution,” Communist lawmaker Zinaida Chistruga said in the November 2 sitting of Parliament. Unaffiliated MP Igor Dodon said that Moldova has an austere budget for next year. “But you earmark millions of lei for purchasing vehicles, doing repairs and increasing salaries. You should be more careful in this respect,” he stated. The Communist and unaffiliated MPs did not vote in favor of the budget of the Central Election Commission because it does not provide financing for implementing the electronic register of voters. The Communists consider that the next elections may be rigged if this register is not put into service. They asked allocating an extra 30 million lei to the CEC by decreasing the budgets of the Audit Office and the Parliament’s apparatus, but their proposal was rejected.