Elections of Gagauzia’s Governor could be annulled – opposition party

The elections of the Governor of Gagauzia can be considered as invalid and could be annulled, inclusively by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), if the candidate of the Electorate Bloc “Patria-Rodina-Ravnopravie”, Valeri Ianioglo, is not registered. The statements belong to the leaders of this electoral party, Valentin Crilov and Valeri Climenco, made Wednesday November 8 at a press conference. According to the cited source, the central election commission (CEC) from the Autonomous Territorial Unit Gagauzia (ATUG), the Court of Appeal of this territorial unit, defying both the legislation in force and the common sense, and obeying the orders of Moldova’s leadership, have excluded from the electoral race a potential winner of the elections for governor. After the 7-day examination of the lists including 6447 signatures gathered in 11 settlements, CEC of Gagauzia assessed, without having a mechanism for signature verification, that 1528 signatures are forged. At the same time, the lists with the signatures collected by the candidate Gheorghe Tabunscic, supported by the government party, were not verified and the candidate was registered 52 minutes after his arrival to CEC, though, according to Valeri Climenco, only the optical, superficial verification of 5 thousand of signatures would have lasted more than one hour. According to the cite source, the fact Tabunscic is supported by the government party favors him in front of his opponents. The participants in the conference said that the elections in ATUG will be falsified at the indication of Moldova’s leadership. They are deeply concerned with the grave violations of legislation and human rights, on the eve of the elections scheduled for February 3. In their opinion, CEC of Gagauzia takes no notice of permanent violations of the Regulations in mirroring the electoral campaign, as the press funded from the budget favors the incumbent bashkan Gheorghe Tabunscic to the detriment of other candidates. Valeri Ianioglo and Valentin Crilov, who sued CEC and participated in the trial, said that they were puzzled by the decision of the judges that ignored the oaths of the persons that gathered signatures. On November 6, the Court of Appeal of Comrat rejected the action and decided to exclude the candidate of “Patria-Rodina-Ravnopravie” Electoral Bloc (EB) from the election race. At the moment, EB waits for the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice, and in case of failure, EB will seek justice at ECHR, Cralov said. According to him, “the elections of the head of Gagauzia can not be considered as democratic and valid if a candidate was excluded from the election race following methods that contravene the legislation. Anyway, “Patria-Rodina-Ravnopravie” will declare the elections as invalid”. The elections of the head of ATUG are to be held on December 3 currently. Valeri Ianioglo says that 93 thousand of electors will be included in the electoral lists, and according to the carried out analyses, not more than 45-50 thousand of electors will go to the polls. The cited source expects these figures to be forged by CEC, so as to show an attendance of at least 60 thousand voters.