The campaign preceding the Governor elections in Gagauzia goes without major incidents and, compared with the previous campaigns, is visible and with a large number of contenders, says the preliminary election monitoring report produced by the Comrat Youth Center “Piligrim-Demo”.
The monitoring covered the period between January 16 and March 6. In a news conference at IPN on March 13, the Center’s executive director Mihail Sirkeli said that even if the campaign takes place without serious deviations, there were several cases when the election posters of some of the contenders were vandalized.
Compared with other elections, the current electoral race includes a record number of contenders and this is due to the reduction in the number of signatures that a candidate must collect in his/her support.
The report shows foreign politicians take an active part in the campaign. A number of contenders appear alongside high-ranking officials from other states. For example, there were published pictures of Irina Vlah together with the President of Russia and other Russian officials, while Nicolae Dudoglo appears near the President of Turkey and the representative of the Russian President.
Mihail Serkeli noted the activity of the Comrat Election Commission is rather transparent, unlike the process of choosing the members of this commission, which was nontransparent. As regards the budget allocated for the elections (about 2.1 million lei), Mihail Serkeli said it is small and allows covering only the main costs such as the remuneration of personnel, transport and printing of ballots. Money for other tasks wasn’t earmarked.
The fact that the voter rolls are compiled by mayor’s offices, whose databases are outdated, is a worrisome particularity. The lists are only in Russian, while a large part of the voters possess identification papers in the official language and thus confusion can appear.
On the election day, four mobile teams of observers will travel to the region to monitor the opening of polling places, the voting process, the closing of polling places, the vote counting and result totaling processes. The monitoring results will be included in the report.
The first round of the Governor elections in Gagauzia will take place on March 22. If necessary, the second round will be held on April 5. Simultaneously, elections will be held in the constituencies Congaz and Gaidar to elect the own representatives to the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia.
