The staff of the Philology Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova expressed their disaccord with the Government’s initiative to merge the Philology Institute and the Cultural Patrimony Institute. In a statement quoted by Info-Prim Neo, they say that the initiative is aimed at liquidating the Philology Institute as independent entity. “The idea of merging the Philology Institute, which in fact means its ultimate annihilation, is cynical and defiant given that this ‘reform’ is planned before there will be two decades of the large-scale national renaissance events that resulted in the adoption on the linguistic legislation, return to the Latin script, legalization of the Romanian language, approval of the tricolor and obtaining of Moldova’s Independence,” the statement says. The staff says that the activity of the Philology Institute, whose goal is to protect and promote the official language of Moldova, is not politicized as it is exclusively scientific. “The attitude of the authorities towards the institution is politicized as they try to subjugate science to their antinational aims and attempt to re-Sovietize the society and reactivate the Stalinist-like control in science,” the statement reads. A special commission was set up to examine the situation. It will come together for a meeting later this week. The proposal to merge the two institutes was made public on May 28. The Philology Institute created instead of three philological institutions (the Institute of Linguistic, the Institute of Literature and Folklore and the National Terminology Center) was restructured in 2006 and became a center of linguistic, historical-literary, theoretical-literary, folkloristic and terminological investigations.