CHISINAU, January 16. /TASS/. Moldova’s Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu has followed President Maia Sandu’s lead by saying that he would also vote for Moldova’s unification with Romania should a referendum on this matter be organized.
"As citizen Alexandru Munteanu, I would vote for unifying with Romania. But as Moldova;s prime minister, I must go by the will of the majority of our citizens who have already thrice voted that our strategic goal is to integrate into the European Union. I will do what I must to achieve this goal," he said in an interview with Observatorul de Nord.
Last week, Sandu said that she would vote for Moldova’s unifying with Romania in a referendum, explaining that the move is necessary to "resist Russia." She admitted however that Moldova doesn’t have majority support for the unification, while most citizens support the idea of joining the European Union, which, in her words, is a "more realistic path."
Numerous political parties in Moldova have for decades been advancing the idea of unification with Romania. Unionists (as they call supporters of this idea in Moldova) hold annual festivities celebrating the 1918 events when Romania deployed its troops to the territory of present-day Moldova and the Sfatul Tarii, or the National Council of Moldova, voted for unifying with neighboring Romania. After being faced with an ultimatum in 1940, Romania ceded this territory to the former Soviet Union. Now, the territories of historic Bessarabia are part of Moldova and Ukraine’s Odessa and Chernovtsy Regions. Moldova’s society is split over how to interpret those events: some say it was Soviet occupation, others claim it was Romania that was the occupying nation.
The majority of the Romanian population supports unification, while Moldova’s government chooses to ignore these calls, since some two thirds of its people are against this idea.