When we speak about the electoral behaviors among voters, we must start from the political culture of the Republic of Moldova. Being a primarily rural-agricultural country, Moldova has supporters of the parochial political culture who can be influenced. They care a lot about their ethnic, religious origin and look for a savior who will solve all their problems, expert Igor Boțan stated in IPN’s public debate “Particularities of voting in geographical areas and territorial-administrative units of the Republic of Moldova, including in the Transnistrian region and ATU Gagauzia: motives and effects”.
“Starting from the fact that the Republic of Moldova is weak, with modest potential, we cannot ignore the influence from outside: Moscow, Brussels and Bucharest. For a country with a modest potential for its citizens, it will be very important which of these three centers of attraction are more advantageous and better match our ethnic, linguistic and cultural particularities,” he stated.
As to the voters in central Moldova, Igor Boțan said these vote with pro-European and pro-unionist parties. Nevertheless, a very curious phenomenon was witnessed in 2015, in Orhei. This phenomenon in time expanded to the whole district and now we have an unordinary phenomenon in the center of the Republic of Moldova. A young person then aged 30, I mean Ilan Shor, whose religion doesn’t interest the people much, who does not speak Romanian and just tries to learn it, comes and conquers at first Orhei town, wins the mayoral elections by one round of voting and then extends his influence all over the district and develops metastases in all the localities in Moldova. It is a new phenomenon that is explained by the people’s disappointment in politicians. We were all impressed to hear that all are thieves, but there are also those who share what they gained,” noted the expert.
Igor Boțan added the vote of the electors in Gagauzia to the category of the geopolitical vote. “We discussed with intellectuals in Gagauzia, who explained the electoral behavior of our people living in the southern districts this way: “We, the Gagauz people, have a memory and a feeling of gratitude for Russia because it saved us as an ethnic group and steadied us in the Steppe of Bugeac. Owing to Russia, we, a small nation with a specific language, through the agency of the Russian language that is universal, have access to the civilizational developments. The Russian language is a window to the big world, where we can assimilate the universal literature, culture and science.” I would say that this is normal. Having this feeling of gratitude to Russia, the Gagauz people vote for parties that plead for close relations with the Russian Federation,” he explained.
The public debate “Particularities of voting in geographical areas and territorial-administrative units of the Republic of Moldova, including in the Transnistrian region and ATU Gagauzia: motives and effects” was the fifth installment of the electoral series “We and the President: who elects who, who represents who” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
