CHISINAU, April 14. /TASS/. The Constitutional Court in Moldova has ruled the legal provision that allowed the republic’s prosecutor general to nominate a candidate for Gagauzia in coordination with the autonomous region of Gagauzia as unconstitutional.
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.
Vice-President of the Executive Committee of Gagauzia Victor Petrov condemned the decision as an attack on his region’s autonomy.
"The Constitutional Court issued a ruling that cannot be called other than a direct attack on the fundamentals of the autonomous status of Gagauzia. Disguised as a `constitutional review’, this is actually the beginning of dismantling the entire government system that has been built by generations and was approved in the turbulent early 1990s," the senior Gagauz official wrote on his Telegram channel. The goal clearly being pursued by Moldovan authorities is to remove the autonomy from the country’s political map, he argued.
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.