The Party “Action and Solidarity” (PAS) proposed a bill designed to fight political cruising among local elected officials. As they do not have the right to legislative initiative, the authors call on the MPs representing the Democratic forces to register this bill as a legislative initiative in Parliament, IPN reports.
PAS secretary general Igor Grosu told a news conference that political cruising is widely spread in Moldovan politics. The people are named to posts while being candidates on the lists of a party, but then leave this party invoking diverse reasons and join other parties. These mainly defect from opposition parties to the ruling parties.
Igor Grosu also said that political cruising is a very toxic phenomenon that leads to the loss of legitimacy of any government. The massive defections from different parties, usually to the Democratic Party, which are often achieved by blackmail, corruption or bribery, are an insult to the people and represent falsification of the promises made by politicians.
The bill proposed by PAS refers to local elected officials. According to jurist Sergiu Litvinenko, even if the phenomenon of cruising persists among MPs as well, there is Article 68 of the Constitution that provides for the nullification of the imperative mandate.
Under the bill, the local and district councilors, district heads and deputy heads and deputy mayors will lose their seats if they stop to be a member of the party that proposed them to posts or on whose lists they ran in elections and won posts, either by dismissal or by exclusion. In the case of mayors, these will lose the seat if they leave the party that fielded them as candidates in local elections.
Igor Grosu called on the MPs who represent the Democratic forces to take this bill, if they support the enumerated proposals, and to register it as a legislative initiative in Parliament so that public debates could be held on it, and to also ask for the opinion of the Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova.
