The organizations in Chisinau, state institutions and political parties should be active in ATU Gagauzia. It is a major mistake, both on the part of the ruling party and other pro-European parties, not to have an office in Comrat. It is essential to revive these channels of communication between the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia and the country’s Parliament, executive director of the Institute for Strategic Initiatives (IPIS) Vadim Pistrinciuc stated in a public debate titled “The referendum has passed. What’s next?”.
Vadim Pistrinciuc believes that there should be national programs, people from the Government to represent Gagauzia. It is necessary to organize meetings with the mayors of Gagauzia and with the inhabitants of the region. These meetings must be regular. Nongovernmental organizations, especially those in the education segment, must open branches in ATU Gagauzia. An exchange of information between young people from the region and those from Chisinau is also useful.
Vadim Pistrinciuc also said that at the October 20 election, combined hybrid warfare mechanisms, particular techniques that had been used in the past in other countries, were tested. “If this will be our new reality and every election will be full of trucks of fake news and the whole country and the state institutions will have to deal only with this, we are lost,” noted the IPIS executive director.
Vadim Pistrinciuc said that everyone was struck by the small difference between the “Yes” and “No” votes in the referendum on amending the Constitution so as to enshrine Moldova’s accession to the European Union in it. According to him, the “No” vote was quite artificial, arranged a long time ago, as journalistic investigations demonstrate, and no one managed to capture this “spiral of silence”. When a person comits illegalities, they usually do not express their opinion. There were certain signals in sociological research and there was a very high number of non-responses at some companies.
According to Vadim Pistrinciuc, although it is not the first time that the Russian Federation endeavors to interfere in the elections in Moldova, what happened now is different. The model by which intervention is carried out has changed. The volumes, the figures, the quantitative part changed the most. In the course of the year, the police took measures to arrest managers of these schemes, but even these things did not show a figure close to what was actually happening.
The debate entitled “The referendum has passed. What’s next?” was staged by IPN News Agency as part of the project “A fair and informed vote for a European Moldova”, funded by the European Union and the German Marshall Fund.
