CHISINAU, April 14. /TASS/. Gagauzian leader Evghenia Gutsul has urged the opposition to join forces in defending the autonomous Moldovan region’s right to appoint a local prosecutor general.
Earlier on Monday, the Constitutional Court in Moldova ruled the legal provision that allowed the republic’s prosecutor general to nominate a candidate for Gagauzia in coordination with the autonomous region as unconstitutional.
"Uniting efforts to protect Gagauzia and preserve our autonomy, language, identity, and the right of our people to shape their destiny has never been more crucial for all rational political forces," reads a statement from Gutsul, released on Telegram through her lawyers.
She condemned the Constitutional Court’s latest decision as "yet another step toward dismantling the Gagauzian autonomy and bringing the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) under total control."
"The central government’s ultimate goal is to get away with Gagauzia, reducing our special legal status to that of a ‘large area with a specific culture’," Gutsul emphasized.
Moldova's Prosecutor General Ion Munteanu, who had requested a review of those provisions, said they contradict international norms and criteria of an independent prosecutor general’s office at a hearing that Gagauz representatives were never invited to attend.
Some 150,000 Gagauz nationals, who represent a Turkic-speaking ethnicity of Orthodox faith, inhabit the southern Moldovan region. In 1990, they proclaimed their own republic, but Chisinau refused to recognize it and sent volunteer units to tame the breakaway region. Bloodshed was avoided after then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered internal troops into southern Moldova. The conflict was resolved in December 1994 when an autonomous region was established there. Back then, Moldova’s parliament adopted a bill granting Gagauzia a special legal status, under which Gagauzians abandoned the plan to form an independent state. The Moldovan authorities acknowledge that they are not honoring these agreements.