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Moldova’s Liberal Party seeks to scrap Russian language’s status

Moldova’s Liberal Party has come up with a proposal to invalidate the status of Russian as the language for inter-ethnic communication

CHISINAU, January 23. /TASS/. Moldova’s Liberal Party, which has a reputation for seeking a merger with Romania and pursuing NATO membership, has come up with a proposal to invalidate the status of Russian as the language for inter-ethnic communication.

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"We’ll appeal to the Constitution Court with a demand to review five laws, which give Russian the status of the inter-ethnic language for communication, including the law on the rights of individuals belonging to ethnic minorities," Liberal Party leader Mihai Ghimpu told reporters on Tuesday.

He recalled that Russian received the status of the inter-ethnic language for communication as part of the official USSR language policy adopted back in 1989.

"That’s unacceptable," he said. "There can be only one language of inter-ethnic communication on Moldovan soil and that’s the Romanian language."

Last week, the Liberals also put forward an initiative to pull out of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

President Igor Dodon, who leads the Socialist Party of Moldova, said on his part the Liberals’ initiatives were linked to the parliamentary election that the country would have later this year.

Opinion polls show that the Liberals, who are quickly losing popularity, may fail to clear the 6-percent threshold and thus might not get any seats in the country's one-chamber parliament.

Officials at the ruling Democratic Party dismissed the Liberals’ initiatives as "the start of an election campaign one way or another."

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