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Dorin Chirtoaca, candidate to the Chisinau mayor post on behalf of the Liberal Party, has promised at a news conference that he will provide “equal living conditions to residents of suburbs and Chisinau,” if he becomes mayor. This intention is similar to the wish to eliminate the difference between cities and villages.

Candidate Chirtoaca regards the following problems as very important: a) roads; b) better public transport; c) building of sewerage networks which represent a danger of infection; d) elaboration of a waste evacuation system and construction of a waste processing plant; e) reconstruction of cultural facilities, stadiums, and playgrounds for children.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has decided, at the request of the candidate to the Chisinau mayor post on behalf of the Party of Moldovan Communists (PCRM), Zinaida Grecianii, to authorise the placement of electoral advertising on private panels only with the agreement and on basis of a special order of the Chisinau City Hall. CEC passed this decision after many electoral competitors had placed electoral advertisement on big commercial panels which capture the attention of citizens. PCRM representatives say that the 139 special places for electoral advertisement are enough.

The 1997 election legislation does not regulate the political advertising through commercial advertisement panels. The electoral bloc Plai Natal placed electoral advertising on private commercial panels for the first time, at the 2001 parliamentary elections. The Democratic Moldovan Bloc and Social Democratic Party of Moldova used this kind of advertising at the 2005 parliamentary elections. Three competitors are already using this advertising method at the current elections: independent candidate Dumitru Braghis; independent candidate Mihai Severovan, while the PCRM is advertising its candidate on an indirect way by placing the image of a girl with the PCRM symbols and words “I Vote”.

The CEC decision obliges indeed Dumitru Braghis and Mihai Severovan to withdraw their electoral advertisement from private commercial panels and to obtain new authorisations from the Chisinau City Hall. In turn, the envisaged candidates describe the CEC decision as obstructionism, since a very short time is left till the end of the electoral campaign to withdraw the existing adds and to post new advertisement.