The Government and Parliament of Moldova must as soon as possible make changes to the legislation so as to enable the residents of Gagauzia to choose five members of Parliament and ensure thus political stability and statehood, Bashkan Mihail Formuzal said in a news conference, quoted by IPN.
“I think that such a decision will be a model step of the government, which will strengthen the understanding between the central authorities and the regions and will build up statehood. The politicians must forget about personal ambitions and must think about the country’s statehood. These five seats in Parliament should be allocated immediately so that the people have a civilized dialogue,” stated the governor of Gagauzia.
He underlined that the Venice Commission and the OSCE Mission also recommended making such an amendment to the legislation. “It is a correct step and the adoption of such changes will show that the residents of Gagauzia are respected and will improve the country’s image abroad as regards the dialogue with the national minorities. Any conscious politician or expert understands that our demands are minimal. We demand two things: obeying the laws on the autonomy of Gagauzia adopted in 1994 and allowing the people of Gagauzia to be represented in Parliament. All the foreign politicians realize that what we seek is very little and don’t understand why the Moldovan authorities do not satisfy our demands,” said Mihail Formuzal.
“There are many problems that we discuss in the competent commissions and ministries and that we try diplomatically not to remove from the dialogue held by the regions with the central power. But if the dialogue is not constructive, we will have to make these details public.”
The People’s Assembly of Gagauzia submitted a legislative initiative to Moldova’s Parliament, proposing creating a mechanism for ensuring the representation of Gagauzia in the legislative body by setting up five uninominal constituencies in the autonomous region for electing by one MP in them, with a majority of votes.
The number of seats demanded by the authorities of Gagauzia is in accordance with the region’s population, which represents about 5% of Moldova’s population, according to the authors of the bill.
