Chisinau “missed” Gagauzia, now we have to think whether autonomy is needed – expert

The situation with the elections in the Gagauz autonomy is a failure of the policy promoted by Chisinau. This was stated on TVR Moldova by the former chairman of the Constitutional Court of Moldova, Alexander Tanase, inviting the authorities to think about whether it is necessary to maintain the status of autonomy, which they do not control?

He noted that for many years the central authorities “were too lenient towards the representatives of Comrat” and now is the time to reconsider this approach. According to him, the electoral victory of the bashkan (head of administration) of the pro-Russian candidate was predictable, “because Russia has never stopped pulling the strings” to maintain its influence in the region.

Recall, Chisinau refused to recognize the victory of the representative of the opposition party “Shor” Evgeniya Hutsul, which advocates strengthening ties with Russia, and demanded that the elections be declared invalid, allegedly due to gross violations. Searches were carried out in the CEC of Gagauzia and voter lists were seized to check them for the so-called “dead souls” for whom they voted.

“Maybe there are suspicions about certain violations in the voter lists, with people who were not in the country, but we cannot say that the vote was in favor of this or that candidate, because there is a voting secret,” Tanase recalled.

He added that from all the signals transmitted by observers, from all the comments made by media colleagues who have observer status, it can be said that there were no incidents indicating a massive violation of the secrecy of the vote.

“We can qualify the situation in the Gagauz autonomy as a political and moral failure of the policy pursued by Chisinau during these three years. Looking at the situation objectively, Chisinau has never had a clear approach or policy towards ATU Gagauzia. I believe that the time has come when we must first assess what this autonomy means, to what extent it has achieved its goals”, Alexander Tanase concluded.

As reported EADaily that the current pro-European authorities of Moldova themselves did everything to ensure that the pro-Russian forces won the elections in Gagauzia, the former Deputy Prime Minister recently spoke Alexander Muravsky. He explained that this result was predetermined by the entire previous frankly negative, if not hostile, policy of the central authorities towards autonomy.