CHISINAU, April 15. /TASS/. Moldovan President Maia Sandu and her ruling Party of Action and Solidarity are targeting Gagauzia to divert voters from their failures in governing the country ahead of the forthcoming parliamentary elections this fall, the autonomy’s deputy head Ilya Uzun said, commenting on the Constitutional Court’s decision to strip Gagauzia of the right to designate a prosecutor.
"Maia Sandu’s regime has imposed a dictatorship in the country, disregarding both the law and the people’s will. Gagauzia’s representatives were not invited to the Constitutional Court’s session. One of the main questions we must ask now is - why did they decide on such an assault on Gagauzia, on us? The answer is simple - they have failed completely. The parliamentary elections are ahead while every day, more details emerge about the criminal, corrupt nature of this regime," Uzun asserted. He reiterated that the Moldovan leadership had recently "paid millions of euros to release from jails killers and murderers, sentenced to life."
"The people do not trust the president and her party - the failure of the presidential election and the referendum on the EU integration have demonstrated this clearly," Uzun said. According to him, the power in Moldova was seized, state institutions were taken over by Sandu’s authoritarian and illegitimate regime, which, for the sake of preserving its power, breaches laws and suppresses media outlets and opposition parties.
Moldova’s Constitutional Court on Monday revoked a number of legal provisions that bound the country’s prosecutor general to appoint Gagauzia’s prosecutor in coordination with the autonomy’s authorities. Moldova’s Prosecutor General Ion Munteanu demanded that the provisions be reassessed, claiming that they contradicted international norms and criteria for an independent prosecutor general’s office. No Gagauz representatives were invited to attend the court session.
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 quell 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 autonomy 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 concede that they are not honoring these agreements.