MPs loyal to bashkan elect new president of Gagauz legislature

After the Comrat-based Court of Appeals invalidated the decision of electing Mihail Cernev as the People's Assembly' president, those 18 Gagauz MPs – loyal to the autonomy's governor Mihail Formuzal – elected Ana Harlamenko as the new speaker, although the Communist MPs were absent, Info-Prim Neo reports. The Communist parliamentarian Demian Karaseni further claims he is the only legal president of the Comrat legislature. According to him, electing Ana Harlamenko was illegal, a reason why he sued the decision. On the other hand, governor Mihail Formuzal thinks the Comrat parliament has all the reasons to withdraw the mandates of those 17 Communists supporting Demian Karaseni, and to rule holding new elections in the respective constituencies. The bashkan told a news conference on Wednesday they had not attended 5 sessions in a row, and the law provides this may be taken as a motive to dismiss them. Mihail Formuzal declares as legal the present structure of the People's Assembly headed by Ana Harlamenko and blames the central authorities and the Communists Party for tensing and keeping the conflict situation in the People's Assembly. “If Chisinau did not interfere, I am absolutely confident the Gagauz MPs will manage to find common ground,” says the bashkan. In their turn, a number of political actors from the autonomy as the Yedinnaya Gagauziya Movement (United Gagauzia) vow to organize “protests against the interference of the central authorities in the work of the People's Assembly and against involving the courts in these pressures” in Comrat on July 12. According to Fiodor Gagauz, the main ideologist of Yedinnaya Gagauziya, what is happening in the People's Assembly now “is a sheer example of pressure exerted by the Communist authorities from Chisinau over the autonomy, to maintain by all means the control lost by the Communists following the local elections last spring.” Issuing a statement on Tuesday, a group of local mayors from Gagauzia, most of them Communists, accuse Mihail Formuzal of “usurping the power” and blame him for organizing the public protests. The mayor of Cangazcicul de Sus, Stepan Tatar, says he and the other 13 signatories of the declaration were instructed by bashkan Formuzal to send villagers for the Saturday protests. Mihail Formuzal has rejected the accusations and said they are part of Chisinau's scenario to ascribe a negative image to the Gagauz autonomy.