Despite living in a poor country with many problems, most Moldovans are proud of their country and hope things will improve. These are the findings of the IMAS poll “The liberty to be free. Conclusions after 25 years”, IPN reports.
54% of respondents think that proclaiming our Independence on August 27, 1991, proved to be a good thing, while 40% disagree.
If they had the chance to go back to 1991, 40% said they would vote again for Independence, 36% would prefer to remain in the USSR and 14% would want to unite with Romania.
The biggest benefit of Independence is the right to freely travel in the EU, according to 58% of respondents. Other gains are the access to modern technologies, the freedom of expression and the market economy.
As regards one of the longstanding dilemmas of Moldovan society, the name of the official language, most people agree that the Romanian and Moldovan languages are the same, although 43% say they are different. Nonetheless, 80% agree that Romanian/Moldovan should be the language of communication between different ethnic groups.
Two thirds of Moldovans are proud of their country, while the rest don’t feel much pride, citing poverty, incompetent government, corruption and chaos.
Nonetheless, Moldovans are optimistic. About 40% of respondents think that young people will have better prospects in 25 years and only 22% are skeptical about this. Overall, people think they will live better, Moldova will become a stronger country and the Transnistrian conflict will be solved.
The poll “The liberty to be free. Conclusions after 25 years” was done by IMAS in partnership with Deschide.MD and the Conflict Prevention and Early Warning Center, between July 25 and August 9, on a sample of 1144 people.
