Why Chisinau Seek to Dismantle Gagauzia’s Autonomy?

Anton ŠVEC

The PAS regime continues to ignore Gagauzia’s calls for dialogue, leaving the region’s population without the right to choose and without legitimate representatives in government

Chisinau and Comrat still remain unable to reach an agreement on the date and conditions for holding elections in the autonomy. The mandates of the members of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia expired around eight months ago, while the position of Bashkan is currently being filled by Ilia Uzun, the former deputy of Evghenia Gutul, who has been in prison for a year following a criminal case allegedly fabricated by the regime. At the beginning of the month, Gagauzian elites made another attempt to initiate dialogue. The People’s Assembly of Gagauzia (PAG) elected a new speaker with eighteen votes – businessman and representative of the “Building Europe at Home” party Valentin Gaidarji. He immediately called on the president’s office, parliament, and government to hold talks aimed at overcoming the crisis and proposed holding elections for the Bashkan and the deputies simultaneously. The appeal from Comrat was rejected by the parliament. Igor Grosu’s press secretary accused Gaidarji of having ties with fugitive oligarch Ilan Sor and announced that there would be no dialogue with him. Such an accusation against a representative of Gheorghe Cavcaliuc’s party appears completely absurd and this was likely precisely the reasoning behind the Gagauz deputies’ decision to support his candidacy. However, Grosu was not impressed by the appointment. The highly dismissive stance of the head of the legislature sends a clear political signal: Chisinau intends to continue systematically putting pressure on the autonomy, regardless of Comrat’s appeals to the international community (Valentin Gaidarji mentioned letters addressed to the embassies of the United States, Russia, and Turkey). Moreover, the speaker’s reaction effectively torpedoes any prospect of direct talks in the near future, since the other recipients of the PAG head’s appeal – the presidency and the government – are hardly likely to take up the task. Maia Sandu has never openly or officially engaged in a working dialogue with representatives of Comrat: for a time, her emissaries operated “under the carpet”, but even those contacts, tied as they were to specific individuals, have long since ceased. The situation is far worse with the Government. Yesterday, Alexandru Munteanu stepped down as acting prime minister. Maia Sandu and PAS will need some time to find a replacement willing to shoulder all the costs of the ruling party’s incompetent governance and meekly carry out the demands handed down from the presidency, thereby rebooting the functioning of the executive branch. In essence, Valentin Gaidarji, Ilia Uzun, and their team, if they even have one, have no one to talk to. One side arrogantly refuses; another, as ever, steers clear of anything that might threaten its artificially inflated ratings; and a third has simply lost its political capacity altogether. Yet the root of the problem lies not in organizational mechanics. What we are dealing with is the regime’s lack of interest in any lawful engagement with the autonomy and its ambition to dismantle entirely a structure that has been enshrined in law and has functioned for three decades. This is borne out by the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the request submitted by the Ministry of Justice. It is worth recalling that, at a recent press conference, Valentin Gaidarji urged that the hearing be postponed and that the sides return to negotiations. Yet on 7 July, the Constitutional Court proceeded at breakneck speed to examine whether the PAG has the authority to approve the composition of the autonomy’s electoral commission. For decades, these competencies of Comrat were never challenged by the central authorities but today, Chisinau has decided, through political means (via a controlled judiciary), to reinterpret the law. The Constitutional Court predictably upheld the Ministry of Justice’s demands, effectively altering the electoral procedure in the autonomy. From now on, the date of the vote and the composition of the local electoral commission will be decided by the national Central Electoral Commission. Just how the latter “knows how” to conduct elections (and referendums) is all too well known. The ruling party’s violations have been consistently ignored: bans on undesirable candidates and political formations, unfair campaigning, and outright manipulation (such as the use of votes from the Transnistrian region, where polling stations were “under bomb threats” and arbitrarily relocated). Every non-competitive method imaginable was deployed to secure an advantage for PAS. It is obvious that, at the next elections in Gagauzia, whenever they take place, a PAS victory is not even a distant prospect. It simply does not align with the preferences of the autonomy’s population. No amount of rigging, dirty tricks, or even dishonest vote-counting can alter the region’s political reality that quickly. That said, the regime is still keen to push through at least a few “trusted individuals”, who would then be tasked with scheming and splitting the local political class and society in order to strengthen PAS’ foothold. They, in turn, would be in a position to “ram through” decisions on shutting down Russian-language schools, overhauling school curricula, shaping media coverage, and making appointments to Gagauzia’s executive committee. The process of dismantling the autonomy, if it continues along broadly political lines, will be a drawn-out affair but over the course of several electoral cycles (which could easily include the snap elections so traditional for Moldova as a whole), the make-up of the PAG and even the figure of the Bashkan may end up bearing little resemblance to what local residents actually want. In parallel with other methods of Romanianization of the region, already given a limited green light under Irina Vlah’s leadership, PAS and its handlers will seek to reshape public sentiment and the political outlook of the autonomy’s inhabitants. However, seizing control of the local electoral commission and political posts in Gagauzia is not the sole objective of the gambit the regime is now playing, for which the central authorities are prepared to disregard even the principle of subsidiarity, a cornerstone of the European Community’s functioning and the protection of minority rights. The dismantling of the autonomy is, above all, yet another Russophobic signal, meant to intimidate the country’s citizens and satisfy the watching eyes in Brussels. Moldova, despite the European Parliament’s freshly adopted resolution, cannot point to any real achievements in reform, the application of EU law, economic development, or living standards. Chisinau’s main commodity remains its political display of total loyalty, expressed primarily through the severing of ties with Russia. It is no coincidence that the very same resolution singles out our country’s 88% alignment with anti-Russian sanctions. The destruction of Gagauzia fits squarely into Maia Sandu's strategy of entering the EU “through the back door” – that is, by showcasing political clientelism and endlessly recycling imaginary threats.