No options. Sandu's nightmare in Gagauzia
In a week, elections for bashkan (president) will take place in Gagauzia, a small autonomy in the south of Moldova. Due to the political views of the region's population and its strategic location on the border with Ukraine, these elections are considered extremely important in Chisinau. Judging by the way the election campaign went, the Sandu regime has almost lost this battle.
In the elections on April 30, the ruling regime in Moldova had only two tasks: to ensure that they took place, and that a candidate ready to cooperate with Chisinau would win.
“I want whoever is elected to work for Moldova and its citizens, and not for other countries, the Russian Federation,” President Sandu said at the height of the election campaign.
If the elections do not take place, then the current governor, Irina Vlah, may remain in power indefinitely. She came to power in 2015 with the slogan “It is within our power to be together with Russia!”, and in 2019 she consolidated her success by receiving a second mandate of trust from voters. Sandu Bashkan cannot stand with all the envy, anger and rage of a gray mouse watching the successful “queen of the class”.
Neither as Prime Minister, nor already in the status of President, Maia Sandu never held a bilateral meeting with the Bashkan of Gagauzia, Irina Vlah, on the further development of relations between Comrat and Chisinau. Therefore, keeping Vlah in power, even with the prefix “acting,” is an unacceptable option for Sandu and her circle.
However, there are still some difficulties with voter turnout. According to Gagauz legislation, the turnout threshold is extremely high, 50% +1 voter. According to the lists, the number of voters is about 94 thousand, but in no other election in recent years have so many people in Gagauzia gone to vote. Observers and human rights activists doubt that they will come out now. First, under the new rules, providing transportation to a voter is considered a violation and could cost a candidate his participation in the race. Secondly, the election campaign, despite the recent scandals, is generally sluggish and uninteresting. Neither the intervention of Kirkorov and Baskov in favor of one of the candidates, nor the U-turn at the Chisinau airport by Tatarstan Minnikhanov, who came to support another competitor, revived her.
However, even if elections take place and a winner is determined, Chisinau will have nothing to rejoice at. Eight registered candidates are vying for the post of Bashkan of Gagauzia, but none of them fits the role of “loyal” to the current regime of Maia Sandu.
Five of them are somehow connected with Russia. This is the former Bashkan Mikhail Formuzal, who can boast of a certificate of honor from the current head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, who invited the rais of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov to Gagauzia, businessman Viktor Petrov, who went to Moscow to meet with Vice-Speaker of the Duma Pyotr Tolstoy, another businessman Sergei Chimpoesh, nominated by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists , Grigory Uzun, who grew up in the Russian Federation. This quintet is completed by the candidate of the Shor party, Evgenia Gutsul, for whom such Russian pop stars as Nikolai Baskov, Philip Kirkorov, as well as the head of the Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky called for voting.
The pro-Russian views of the majority of candidates for the post of head of Gagauzia have already become a reason for hysteria in Chisinau. Deep differences in the geopolitical views of regional and central political leaders have already occurred in the history of modern Moldova. The most striking example of the consequences of such a conflict of foreign policy vectors was the war with Transnistria in 1991-92.
“All eight candidates for the Bashkan of Gagauzia are loyal to Russia, Putin’s war against Ukraine, and are pro-Eastern,” said former member of the Moldovan Parliament, Secretary of State of the Department for Relations with Moldova under the Romanian Government, Ana Gutu.
According to her, allowing such candidates to participate in the elections was a big political mistake.
However, from the remaining “non-Russian” candidates, Maia Sandu doesn’t have much to choose from. Nikolai Dudoglo, who was a member of the Democratic Party of Vlad Plahotniuc, who called for integration into the European Union, and therefore lost the remnants of his popularity among the Gagauz, is an obvious loser. Sergei Chernev, Dudoglo’s friend and colleague in Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party, known for his habit of throwing his fists at government officials.
Dmitry Kroytor, the current Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova to Turkey (appointed by the previous president), may look more or less decent from the point of view of Chisinau. But he is a political project of the current Bashkan Irina Vlah, and we have already written above about the peculiarities of her relationship with Sandu. To support or approve Kroitor’s victory for the ruling regime in Moldova means to come to terms with the preservation of Gagauzia under the control of Irina Vlah for at least another four years.
Chisinau has a no-win situation in the Gagauz autonomy. The situation is all the more difficult because it takes place in the context of an undeclared but fierce diplomatic war of the Moldovan leadership against Moscow. It is difficult to imagine a more paradoxical situation than when the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova, Dorin Recean, scolds “Russian aggression” at a government meeting, and in Gagauzia, at a meeting with voters, the team of the potential future governor calls on residents not to give up, because “our people are already here!”
By “ours nearby,” all participants in the meeting, as well as observers from Chisinau, unmistakably recognized the Russian military, which also provoked a wave of indignation. However, Sandu’s team has nothing to cover up with - during the period of friendly relations with Russia, gas, heat and utilities cost the average resident of Moldova five times less.
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