Transnistria and Gagauzia

MOLDOVAN SPEAKER AND PREMIER TO ATTEND SPECIAL MEETING IN GAGAUZIA

20 january, 2014

The legislative forum of the southern Moldovan autonomous region of Gagauzia, the Popular Assembly (GPA), will convene for a special meeting next Wednesday, January 22, to be attended by Moldovan Parliament Chairman Igor Corman and Prime Minister Iurie Leanca. Such accord was reached between GPA Acting Speaker Demyan Karaseni and Deputy Speaker Alexander Tarnavskii following their meeting with Corman and Leanca in Chisinau last Friday night.

The Popular Assembly wrote on its official website afterwards that the emergency meeting on Wednesday would try to resolve “existing differences”.

At the Friday negotiations, the parties analyzed the current socio-political situation in the autonomous region in connection with preparation for “a legislative and a consultative referenda” scheduled for February 2.

The interlocutors also decided that on the following Monday, January 20, the Prime Minister would delegate to Comrat [the capital of Gagauzia] a group of deputy ministers to study in detail the situation developing in the autonomy.

As already reported by Infotag, the central Moldovan leadership maintains that the Gagauzia Popular Assembly has exceeded its plenary powers by announcing the referenda. The Moldovan Prosecutor General’s Office has even initiated criminal proceedings against Gagauzia lawmakers the referenda initiators, and summoned them to Chisinau for interrogation last week.

The Gagauzia leadership, first and foremost the region’s Bashkan [Governor] Mikhail Formuzal, keep maintaining that nobody has the right to deprive the Gagauz people of the right to express their opinion about which external political vector the Republic of Moldova should choose for its further development – towards the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan or towards the European Union, the more so that this question is going to be asked at only a “consultative referendum”, whose outcome will not be binding on the official Chisinau.

And the “legislative referendum” will be on approving or disapproving a bill on the delayed status of Gagauzia autonomy, which stipulates that if only the Republic of Moldova ceases to be an independent and sovereign state, Gagauzia will become an independent republic.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Iurie Leanca, Corman and Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti have strongly criticized the very idea of holding the regional referenda, claiming that they have been organized for purely political goals in the run-up to the all-Moldovan parliamentary elections [in late 2014], and that they have nothing to do with “the population’s interests”.

However, the Gagauzia authorities seem to be immune to the central government’s objections. Last Friday evening, the Executive Committee [government] of Gagauzia convened for an emergency meeting and adopted a Resolution on preparation to and holding of the said 2 referenda on February 2. The administrations of the autonomy’s Comrat, Ceadir-Lunga and Vilnius raions [districts], all primarias [municipalities] and locality executive councils have been demanded to carry out the law-stipulated set of measures to prepare for the said referenda.

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