The previous elections showed that about 35% of the voters usually cast their ballots in Ceadir-Lunga as, most probably, a large part of the voters are abroad, said the secretary of the Central Election Commission of Moldova. According to Andrei Volentir, the dissemination of exaggerated figures about the voter turnout in the referendums in Gagauzia – over 70% - is nothing else but a manipulation attempt, IPN reports.

Andrei Volentir said there are almost 111,000 voters in Gagauzia, not 90,000 as some say. “I presume that they did as in 2009. The mayors excluded those who went abroad from the electoral registers. It’s evident that if the number of voters is cut by 20,000, the electoral base is reduced by 22%,” he stated for IPN.

Two referendums that the central authorities consider illegal were held in Gagauzia on February 2. The voters pronounced on the country’s external development direction and the local population’s right to self-determination, if Moldova loses its sovereignty.