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Raions and economy
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So, the local elections are over. And now workaday routine activities begin — the actual establishment of the 32 new (old!) raions (Soviet type second tier administrative districts) and the debugging of their administration. What lies ahead is getting back the old premises (majority of which are leased out or privatised), fill them with personnel, arrange communications, statistics, etc. A particular problem is employment, which requires measures of supporting entrepreneurship and people with initiative. Pre-election political rhetoric is gradually fading away and the main thing is being brought to the forefront — what good will going back from judete (post-Soviet, reformed second tier administrative units) to raions bring to the population and the economy, which is — as is well known — primordial.
Territorial administration is not an easy task. Countries of Europe (that is called “Europe of regions”) have accumulated vast experience in this regard — in legislation, division of budgets, using funds for employment promotion, infrastructure reconstruction and environment improvement.
We, those who live in the Republic of Moldova, are still to go all the way along this path. The situation is being aggravated by the fact that since the very beginning and further, for over fifty years the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova (SSRM) was guided by the branch-like principle of planning, allocation of resources and administration under multiple (no less than 10 times!) reshaping of its administrative and territorial division. After 1991, when omnipotent Gosplan and branch ministries vanished, regions still got neither rights nor real economic basis in form of municipal property or sufficient local budget revenues.
Orienting itself at European standards of local self-government, Moldova’s Parliament ratified during 1997–1998 the European Charter of Local Autonomy and through the introduction of judete consolidated the country’s administrative and territorial division. It was hoped that there would be benefits from the potential of larger regions. Later on, though, followed changes that were rather formal than substantial. Besides, due to sharp expansion of state apparatus at the higher, national level, the same happened at the local level.
Despite the transition to the market economy, local authorities did not find any specific stimuli for entrepreneurship development (except for personal participation). Indicators of this dramatic areas follow: 68% of enterprises and 57% of financial assets turnover of small and medium sized enterprises (SME) are registered in the Chisinau Municipality — closer to the Parliament and Government, tax and customs departments, licensing chamber, etc.
What is to wait for now, given the return to raions? For now, the Government, recalling its promise to cut down expenditures, approved on June 10, 2003 the structure and personnel of raion, municipality and community administrations. At that, as the Prime-Minister said “in order to increase their efficiency we will also resort to dismissal, but it will be done under the legislation”. Let us hope that more essential changes in the rights and functions of local administrations will follow, first of all as regards the local socio-economic development.
Otherwise, we will not avoid another wave of “consolidation-fragmentation”, as it has already happened in the past. Indeed, the only thing that history teaches one is that it teaches nothing:
- May 1948: the second session of the Supreme Soviet of the MSSR abolished the judete and established 60 raions on the republic’s territory;
- The 50s: number of raions decreased, at first down to 46 (1950) and later — to 35 (1959). At the same time, it was considered expedient to unite raions into 4 regions (Balti, Chisinau, Tiraspol and Cahul). By the way, the present building of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Moldova was intended to host the administration for those regions;
- 1963: instead of large regions, though, at the time of permanent reorganisations of Nikita Khrushchev there took place an abrupt consolidation of raions and a decrease of their number to 18;
- but, the next year already, a new wave of fragmentation followed: 1964 — 26, 1996 — 31, 1972 — 33 and 40 raions in the 80s;
- 1990: The Supreme Soviet of the SSR of Moldova, based on Declaration of Sovereignty, approved the Statute on Improvement of the Country’s Administrative and Territorial Division and charged the Committee on Issues of Local Self-government to “submit proposals” to respond to the need to have territorial units (judete, traditional for Bessarabia) with sound demographic potential and sustainable financial and economic basis; the Planning Research Institute proposed to the Government four alternative drafts: 7, 9, 12 or 18 judete (seven years later, one of those drafts served as the basis for the 1998 reform);
- 1998: restoration of judete (10 units), plus the Territorial Autonomous Unit Gagauzia; Transdnistria retained 5 raions;
- 2003: return to raions (32), plus Gagauzia (3 internal raions) and 5 raions in Transdnistria.
In Soviet times, the postulate on “unity of political and economic raion administration, which is a junction point where directives of the party and Soviet power are executed” (Communist Party of Soviet Union in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses and Conferences, volume 4, p. 234) served as an ideological consecration of “consolidations-fragmentations”. When the raions were consolidated, it was meant to “cut down state apparatus expenditures”, and when they were fragmented — “to bring the authorities closer to the people”. During 2001–2002, the authorities, while arguing for giving up the judete and returning to more fragmented raions, produced both (!) these arguments!
It is desirable that it will be that way. But this can be only achieved through avoiding strict centralisation and administration, while developing municipalities and raions as self-governing economic communities, responsive to entrepreneurial initiative and social innovations.
The small potential of each of the 40 new/old raions (including Transdnistria and Gagauzia) can be compensated — ad exemplum of Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria — through the establishment of 4–5 “regions of development” (North, Centre, Southeast, South and Chisinau municipality) on the country’s territory, whose economic peculiarities, transport benefits, demographic and industrial potential would allow the achievement — within concrete strategies for each programmed region — of large projects of national importance, including with attraction of loans, investments and technical aid both from the Commonwealth of Independent States countries and the European Union.
The stable — for the nearest 10–15 years — combination of economic and administrative division into raions of the country can let us avoid new voluntaristic decisions on their number, composition and boundaries, and the functions of local development administration will gain a real economic basis and specific social environment.