Regrettably, conditions for the persons who wanted to learn Romanian to have access to free lessons in all the country’s districts weren’t created in Moldova. The state didn’t provide a proper program for learning the Romanian language at least at school level, journalist Lilia Burakovski stated in IPN’s public debate “Reasons, components and consequences of restart of linguistic conflict”.
According to the journalist, those who called or call themselves Moldovans or Romanians do not always understand the TV programs in Romanian and they dub the information in Russian. “According to sociological researches, since May 2020, 33% of the population have watched news items only in the Romanian language, 27.9% only in Russian and 37.7 % in both of the languages. This way, the people have access to the mass media and the possibility of obtaining information in both of the languages. The law on the functioning of languages was probably thought so as to enable the Russian speakers to receive information in Russian. But the way in which this was done generated a lot of questions,” she stated.
In another development, the journalist said the role of the social networking sites in Moldova is to create a place where the people express their feelings, including about the controversies over the linguistic legislation, but not many people repeat this when they leave home. The people who are in power, the advisers to the President should deal with their areas of responsibility and should not stir up the linguistic altercations.
According to Lilia Burakovski, when the people start to answer for their statements, this will mean a message for the whole society and it will not be possible to divide society according to any of the criteria. “This scandal around the linguistic aspect hides important moments of another kind, including inability to deal with economic, health problems and no one saw that the prices of medicines have grown since the start of the year. Everyone speaks about the language now. This is a political strategy for distracting the population’s attention from essential problems. That’s why a prevention mechanism is needed so that such situations do not appear,” she stated.
In another development, Lilia Burakovski said the Socialists will try again to employ the law on the functioning of languages, insisting simultaneously on the necessity of a new government, preferably of Maia Sandu, so that they have who to blame for the bad situation in the county. The PSRM’s active promotion of the Russian language and of the friendship with the Russian Federation is aimed at affecting Renato Usatyi’s Our Party before the snap parliamentary elections as this caused a lot of problems to Igor Dodon in the previous presidential elections. At the same time, the Shor Party will continue to support the Socialists as the examination of the case of Ilan Shor goes on.
She called on the journalists to tell the truth in relation to the linguistic problem and not to stir things up.
The public debate “Reasons, components and consequences of restart of linguistic conflict” is the 169th installment of the series “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
