alegeri.md

One more candidate for the Bashkan of Gagauzia refused to participate in the electoral race. It is Serghei Buzadji, who sent the corresponding application to the local Electoral Commission. According to Commission Chairman Valentin Cara, the application would be examined at the Commission meeting on Friday, 13 March.

Ten contestants have remained in the electoral race: Valerii Ianioglo, Ruslan Garbali, Nicolai Dudoglo, Irina Vlah, Oleg Garizan, Alexandr Stoianoglo, Serghei Cernev, Dmitrii Croitor, Ilia Anastasov, and Leonid Dobrov. Earlier, Oleg Caici had also withdrawn from elections. // IPN

Some “dead souls” have been found in the lists of voters in the Gagauz autonomy. The information was provided to the Gagauz government and to the local Central Electoral Commission by the head of the Comrat district, Ivan Sari.

He had posted online the scanned copies of his letters to the Bashkan, to the chairman of the People’s Assembly, and to the head of the Central Electoral Commission of Gagauzia, in which he was giving examples of the violations found in electoral district no. 4 in Comrat. // gagauzinfo.md

On 10 March, representatives of the Gagauz civil society discussed the declarations of some Moldovan politicians who had accused Russia of interference with the country’s internal affairs.

“We will make all the efforts necessary to conduct the Bashkan elections in compliance with the Gagauz and Moldovan legislation, and none of the candidates has been suspended from the race. Any attempts to interfere with the electoral process will be firmly suppressed. We are sorry that Ivan Burgudji and other members of the People’s Assembly are part of this anti-Gagauz act. We demand that the leaders of the Republic of Moldova stop inflaming relations with our strategic partner — the Russian Federation — and making provocative declarations concerning the Gagauz autonomy,” public figure Olga Dudoglo read out the resolution.

If these demands are ignored, the civil society intends to boycott the Bashkan elections and “use its constitutional right of assembly”. The demands have been supported by more than one hundred persons representing all localities of the Gagauz autonomy. // gagauzinfo.md

The Piligrim-Demo Youth Center finds that the survey conducted by Intellect Group, according to which Irina Vlah accumulates 57% of votes in the first round of the Bashkan elections, does not reflect the voters’ intentions. According to the Center, the survey had been mostly aimed at forming the public opinion. Mihail Sircheli, the head of the Center, says that the company’s ability to conduct such surveys is doubtful: “The organization is not quite known; we haven’t heard of it earlier. We cannot find any earlier surveys by this organization, so we have no possibility to compare. Also, we cannot compare their surveys with the surveys of other companies, better known on the market, such as IMAS-INC, or any other organizations that conduct political or sociological barometers of public opinion.”

Intellect Group conducted a survey ordered by the Panorama newspaper during the period from 25 February to 2 March on a sample of 988 respondents in all 27 localities of Gagauzia. // gagauzmedia.md