Gagauzia bashkan election date challenged by Executive Committee
Ilya Uzun, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of Gagauzia, has described the Gagauzia bashkan election scheduled by the Central Electoral Commission Moldova (CEC) for 15 November as illegal.
According to Uzun, setting the date of the bashkan election is the exclusive prerogative of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia. For that reason alone, he argues, a decision taken by another body cannot be considered lawful.
He also pointed to further procedural problems which, in his view, prevent the forthcoming vote from being regarded as legitimate. The decision declaring the office of bashkan vacant, which became the basis for the Central Electoral Commission Moldova to set the election date, was supported by only 11 of the 33 deputies in the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia.
That means there was no quorum required to adopt such a decision. The Executive Committee of Gagauzia is now challenging the decision in court, while Ilya Uzun plans to raise the issue of its repeal before the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia.
“Will there be at least one patriotic deputy who will register a draft resolution with the People’s Assembly to repeal the decision declaring the office of Bashkan vacant? If not, the Executive Committee of Gagauziawill do so in the very near future,” Uzun said.
The dispute means that an early resolution of the political crisis in Gagauzia remains unlikely. With the legality of the vacancy decision itself under challenge, the Gagauzia bashkan election scheduled for 15 November is set to remain at the centre of the confrontation between the autonomy’s institutions.
