Institute for Social and Political Studies

Transformation of the Republic of Moldova from the former Soviet Republic into a sovereign independent state raised the necessity of harmonization of interethnic relations by its authorities, mainly by its legislative branch. On the territory of the former Soviet Union, in the course of consolidation of state independence of the former Soviet republics, this problem was solved by taking various approaches. In the Baltic countries, for instance, their entry in 1940 in the Soviet Union was viewed from the legal viewpoint as occupation. Therefore, after regaining their state independence, individuals who arrived in these countries after 1940, did not get the right to citizenship after the collapse of the USSR.

It is well-known that in the Republic of Moldova there has been taken a fundamentally new approach – the 1991 Law on citizenship granted to everyone, without exception, permanently residing at that time in the territory of the Republic of Moldova the right to become citizens of that country. A statement of an unconditional equality of all citizens of the Republic of Moldova has been laid down in the 1994 Constitution of the Republic of Moldova. At the same time, the Republic of Moldova inherited as a result of political collisions occurred during the USSR breakdown the problem of normalization in a legitimate way of the situation in the Southern localities of Moldova compactly inhabited by the Gagauzi. With a view to resolving this problem within a unitary Moldovan state Article 111 was included in the Constitution, which provided for a special legal status to these localities to be stipulated in the form of organic laws. Article 111 (2) serves as a guarantor of stability of these special statuses which stipulates that in order to modify provisions of these organic laws no less than three thirds of votes of the Members of Parliament are required (i.e. 61 votes out of the total number of 101). In December 1994 the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova adopted an Organic Law on Special Legal Status of Gagauzia (Gagauz-Yeri) that was expected to constitute a legal basis for resolving this complex problem aggravated by manifestations of political extremism shown from both sides during the collapse of the USSR.

Article 1 (1) of the law reads as follows, ”Gagauzia (Gagauz-Yeri) is an autonomous territorial entity with a special status as a form of self-determination of the Gagauzi and is an integral part of the Republic of Moldova”. According to this law the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia had to adopt by the two/thirds of the votes Ulozheniye (basic law) of Gagauzia. And subsequently, within the limits of its competence, local laws were to be adopted by the majority vote.

Yet, autonomous territorial entity (ATE) Gagauz-Yeri existed for about three years (!) without the Ulozheniye and only on 5 June 1998 the People’s Assembly adopted the Ulozheniye of Gagauzia. Since the entire domestic legislation of the Gagauz-Yeri shall correspond to this Ulozheniye, likewise to the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova and the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri, we should dwell on those provisions that raise today a number of questions.

We shall begin by mentioning Art.2 (1), which reads, ”the Ulozheniye of Gagauzia constitutes its basic law and has an exclusive legally-binding power on the whole territory of Gagauzia”. Obviously, the given wording sets an exclusive priority of the Ulozheniye inclusively with regard to the Constitution and legislation of the Republic of Moldova, which is unacceptable. At least, in order to exclude discrepant reading, this article of the Ulozheniye should have another wording that would exclude wrong interpretation.

Article 7 of the Ulozheniye is in an obvious contradiction with Art. 27 (2) of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri and with Art.111 (2) of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova. For, both the Constitution and the Law provide for the right of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova by two/thirds of the votes make changes in the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri. Yet, Art.7 of the Ulozheniye reads that “The status of Gagauzia may not be modified without consent of its people”, which constitutes the veto right of the ATE on any attempts of the Parliament to change the status of the ATE that, again, contradicts the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova.

Art.5 (4) of the Law on special legal status provides for the right to withdraw from Gagauzia by means of a local referendum of any Gagauz locality. Yet, Art.8 (6) of the Ulozheniye gives this right only to “those Gagauz localities where the Gagauzi make less than 50% of the population”. We see an obvious discrepancy that, in certain circumstances, can provoke collisions.

Also, Art.8 (7) of the Ulozheniye runs counter to Art.5 (3) of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri. The law stipulates, “inclusion of localities in Gagauzia… is done based on the results of the local referendum organized by the Government of the Republic of Moldova in each locality”. At the same time, Art.8 (7) of the Ulozheniye denies the Moldovan Government this right, it reads as follows, “Decision on holding of and on the results of a local referendum on the inclusion or withdrawal from the autonomy is taken by the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia”. In other words, the People’s Assembly, according to the Ulozheniye, assumed the right to hold referenda in the localities of the Republic of Moldova, which were not part of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri. This can become grounds for conflicts in a situation when the Moldovan state does not register its citizens on the basis of their nationality and when national self-identification is a personal matter of each person.

One of the main matters for the power of any level is known to be the issue of property. Art.6 of the Law reads, “Land, mineral deposits, water, flora and fauna, other natural resources, movable and immovable property situated in the territory of Gagauzia shall be the property of the people of the Republic of Moldova whilst constituting the economic basis of Gagauzia”. At the same time, Art.12 (2) of the Ulozheniye stipulates absolutely the opposite – public property belongs to the State and the autonomous territorial entity of Gagauzia. Thus, we see an obvious contradiction with the Law on special legal status, which is only impaired by Art. 51 of the Ulozheniye that determines the rights of the People’s Assembly in the following way: Art.51 (19) reads, the rights of the People’s Assembly of Gagauz-Yeri include: “ legislative regulation of ownership, disposal and use of land and other natural resources situated in the territory of Gagauzia”. Naturally, there cannot be two owners of the same values, likewise there cannot be two legislative bodies regulating the procedure of possession, command and use of the same values.

Today the Republic of Moldova is in a very difficult social and economic situation. And the problem of a proper distribution of collected taxes is naturally extremely acute. This is why Art.18 (2) of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri, which reads that “Relationship between the budget of Gagauzia and the State budget shall be determined in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Moldova on budgetary system and on the State budget for the relevant year and shall take the form of fixed payments deriving from all types of taxes and revenues,” raises a number of questions. This is absolutely clear that this provision of the Law is at variance with the principle of equal responsibilities of people, business operators and territorial second-tier administrative units (raions/judets) with regard to payment of taxes in the State budget. To be a Gagauz and reside in the ATE territory becomes more advantageous from the economic point of view, than to be a law-abiding citizen of Moldova on the rest of the territory. This factor can become a subject of political manipulation, a source of tension in interethnic relationships.

A comparative analysis of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri and the Ulozheniye raises also a number of questions on pre-term cessation of the mandate of the Head of Gagauzia. Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri (Art.13 (10)) unequivocally says, “A decision to dismiss the Head of Gagauzia shall be taken by a two-thirds majority of the elected deputies of the People’s Assembly; decisions to dismiss other officials of organs of public administration shall be taken by a simple majority of the deputies of the People’s Assembly.” At the same time, the Ulozheniye and the Law of the ATE Gagauzia on referendum (Art.6 (г)) stipulate the removal of the Head of Gagauzia through referendum. Art. 69 (3) reads as follows, “If the People’s Assembly adopts a decision on dismissal of the Head of Gagauzia within the period not exceeding 30 days a referendum shall be held upon the removal of the Head of Gagauzia from his office. The procedure of holding referendum is established by domestic law”. Whereas Art.56 (6) of the Ulozheniye reads, “Resolutions are adopted by a majority vote of those present at the session if a quorum has been secured”, Art.69 (3) of the Ulozheniye does not stipulate the necessity of having a two/thirds of the votes of the elected deputies in order to adopt decisions on the dismissal of the Head of Gagauzia, since this provision is unequivocally stipulated in Art.13 (10) of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri.

In other words, following the provisions of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri, the conflict over the referendum of 24 February has no legal contents, and the address of the President of the Republic of Moldova to the Gagauz people urging them to take part in the referendum of 24 February is a call to unlawful actions.

The Ulozheniye comprises a number of provisions that are not stipulated either in the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova or in the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri. In particular, Art.12 (3) of the Law provides that the competence of the People’s Assembly shall include “consideration of the question and the submission of motions to the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova concerning the declaration of a state of emergency in the territory of Gagauzia as well as the introduction in such cases of a special form of government to ensure the protection and safety of the people of Gagauzia”. Whereas Art.51 (16) of the Ulozheniye stipulates the introduction on the territory of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri not only of the state of “emergency”, but of the state of “siege”.

At the same time, Chapter VIII of the Ulozheniye – “Law and Order”, Art.89 (1) provides for the involvement with a view to ensuring law and order of the “People’s Guard detachments”. The existence and operation of such units is not stipulated either in the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova or the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri. In the situation when the society is not free from suspiciousness, when the ATE Gagauz-Yeri representatives admit that the autonomy’s population possesses large quantities of unaccounted weapons, this wording can be used as well in order to stir up distrust, provocations in crisis situations, etc.

It is worth mentioning that the Ulozheniye of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri comprises chapters that relate, in fact, to an exclusive competence of the Republic of Moldova. First of all, this refers to Chapter II “Rights, freedoms and duties of an individual and citizen”. This chapter should be undoubtedly excluded from the Ulozheniye since basic rights and freedoms of people, a democratic, legal character of the State are determined by the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, the ATE Gagauzia being its integral part.

One of the problems that provoked in its time political confrontation was the one of the state language of the Republic of Moldova. We welcome the fact that both Art.3 (1) of the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri and Art.16 (1) of the Ulozheniye stipulate that in the territory of Gagauzia the Gagauz, Moldovan and Russian languages function as the official languages. At the same time, Art.53 of the Ulozheniye provides that “Chairman of the People’s Assembly shall speak the Gagauz language”, Art.13 (3) of the Law on special legal status of the ATE Gagauzia and Art.62 (1) of the Ulozheniye say, “The Head of Gagauzia shall be a citizen of the Republic of Moldova, …who speaks the Gagauz language”. Yet, neither the Law nor the Ulozheniye mentions the requirement that high officials of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri should speak Moldovan (Romanian) – the state language of the Republic of Moldova. Perhaps this wording led to the fact that after 12 years since the adoption of the Law on the state language of the Republic of Moldova, representatives of the Gagauz authorities cannot ensure the respect of the right of citizens of the Republic of Moldova to use the state language in communication with them. It was due to the fact that by far not all deputies of the People’s Assembly and other officials of Gagauz-Yeri speak the state language of the Republic of Moldova that the author has chosen the Russian language for the publication of this material.

This brief and a priori far from being a full review allows to draw, nevertheless, a clear conclusion – the problem of a legal devolution of powers between the centre and the autonomous territorial entity Gagauz-Yeri has not been resolved yet. We have an obvious discrepancy between the central and local legislation on many fundamental issues. It is worth mentioning that the Elections Code of the Republic of Moldova specifies the procedure of holding local referenda on the ATE territory that has a special legal status. Whereas, the People’s Assembly adopted on 19 May 1999 the Law of the ATE Gagauzia on referendum.

Objectively, such state of the legal basis should have brought to conflict situations when each side interpreted those disparities to their advantage. To prove this, we would mention a Resolution of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia of 31 July 2001 “On suspension on the territory of Gagauzia of the application of law of the Republic of Moldova of 20 July 2001 “On the amendment of Art.13 of the Law on privatisation”, which reads, “the property of Gagauzia has been included in the Republic of Moldova’s Programme of privatisation without having consulted and been endorsed by the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia which is the only owner of the Gagauz property.

The above-mentioned law, which directly infringes upon the interests of the Gagauz people, cannot be observed in the territory of Gagauzia. Should any attempts to apply this law in the territory of Gagauzia be made without the knowledge and consent of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia, all natural and legal persons should know that any transactions concluded by the authorities of the Republic of Moldova shall have no legal power on the territory of Gagauzia”.

It is clear that the adoption of such decisions cannot call off the above-quoted provisions of the Law on property in the territory of Gagauzia. The issue of property, even with the seven-year delay, should be resolved through legislative delineation of ownership rights between the centre and the autonomous territorial entity of Gagauz-Yeri.

Another example is the “Decision on ban on the sales and use on the territory of Gagauzia of the administrative map with judets of the Republic of Moldova” of 11 September 1998, which reads as follows, “At the end of 1998 in post-offices and some retail bookstores of Gagauzia there appeared on the market the map of judets of the Republic of Moldova which completely distorted the official name of the territorial autonomy of the self-constituted Gagauz people. …Such provocations arouse justified indignation of the autonomy’s population and give grounds for reflections to politicians whether such people as the Gagauzi can be kneeled without paying attention to this people’s status, interests and traditions.

Declarations of the public reflect concern and anxiety about the future of the national-state system of the Republic of Moldova with regard also to a deliberate distortion of the status of Transnistria”.

As appears from this official document, Transnistria has a certain status within the boundaries of the Republic of Moldova and the People’s Assembly warns against a deliberate distortion of this status. From the legal viewpoint, Transnistria is an integral part of the Republic of Moldova, on whose territory state structures of the Moldovan State have been destroyed by forcible means, the national sovereignty of the State has been usurped, which is a grave felony. We can only regret that both the People’s Assembly and the Executive Committee of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri have signed a series of documents with representatives of this anti-constitutional regime. In my opinion, the signing of these documents consolidates even more positions of the separatist regime and puts the ATE Gagauz-Yeri in a vulnerable situation. In fact, Chişinău official representatives have also signed since 1992 a whole range of documents with representatives of the anti-constitutional regime, which caused a great damage to the Moldovan statehood. Nevertheless, the signed documents between representatives of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri and representatives of Tiraspol can be good grounds for imputation of cooperation with an anti-constitutional regime.

To conclude, I would like to express my personal thoughts. The Law on special legal status of Gagauzia was adopted at the end of 1994. At present certain experience has been gained in the application of that Law and there have been observed certain trends. In this connection I would like to note that even the Constitution of the federative Russia includes provisions on the authorizes representatives of the President in seven regions uniting different subjects of the Federation. It is clear that in a unitary Moldovan State greatly suffering from the illness of separatism, it is absolutely necessary to appoint a prefect in the ATE Gagauz-Yeri who would represent the central power without infringing upon the powers of the local authorities. Evidently, the procedure of appointing judges, the Prosecutor of Gagauzia and the subordinate prosecutors, the Head of the National Security Department of Gagauzia, the Head of the Interior Department of Gagauzia, Commander of the units of carabineri (internal forces), stipulated in the Law on special legal status of Gagauzia, is in a clear contradiction with the requirement of an impartial observance of laws on the entire territory of the Republic of Moldova and has nothing to do with “the meeting of national needs and originality of the Gaguzi, with their fullest development, enrichment of their language and national culture” etc. The other matter is that the above-mentioned categories of officials on their appointment should know all the three official languages functioning on the territory of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri. We witness today a conflict situation and see that the procedure of their appointment stipulated in the Law on special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri could be a source of a dangerous destabilization.

I must draw your attention to Art.1 (4) of the Law on special legal status of Gagauzia and to Art.7 of the Ulozheniye that read, “in the event of a change in the status of the Republic of Moldova as an independent State, the people of Gagauzia shall have the right to external self-determination”. Life proved that this provision provokes and encourages separatist tendencies and stipulates by law the perception of the Moldovan statehood as something temporary and therefore having no value and not deserving respect from its citizens.

The fault for the absence in the course of many years of a clear coordinated hierarchy of laws, including the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova and the domestic laws and resolutions, the absence of a mechanism of their guaranteed implementation strictly following the standards of a democratic state based on the rule of law undoubtedly lies on both sides. At the same time, it is clear that the central authorities after having adopted the Law on special legal status of Gagauzia believed their mission fulfilled and let the things drift.

It is absolutely clear that today the legal basis for the settlement of the conflict is missing and ignoring this obvious fact by any of the sides represents a real danger to the Moldovan statehood. In order to resolve the conflict today both sides should impose a moratorium on the use of force and cease more than doubtfully grounded recriminations through the mass media. At least, Art.21 of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova on presumption of innocence has not been abolished. And the threats like “to begin the realization of the will of the Gagauz people expressed in the Declaration “On the freedom and independence of the Gagauz people from the Republic of Moldova” of 19 August 1990 uttered in the Resolution of the People’s Assembly of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri of 31 July 2001 cannot be today justified by political infantilism of the period of the USSR disintegration and should be viewed as blackmail and a prerequisite for usurpation of the sovereignty of the Republic of Moldova.

Authorised representatives of both sides should work out a procedure of bringing the existing laws of all levels referring to the ATE Gagauz-Yeri into line with the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, with international conventions. And the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova and the People’s Assembly of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri should ensure this harmonization by adopting relevant laws or by amending them. It is worth mentioning that the Ulozheniye of Gagauzia specifies very clearly, in details, mechanisms of ensuring independence of Gagauzia from the central power. At the same time, this document contains obvious infringements of the subordinate administrative bodies’ rights. All these aspects, such as delineation of ownership rights, creation of a mechanism of guaranteed correspondence of laws of the Gagauz autonomy to the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova and others, should be therefore taken into consideration in reviewing the legislation of Gagauz-Yeri.

It is clear, that the relevant administration organs of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri should denounce unilaterally and without delay all previously signed agreements with representatives of the anti-constitutional separatist regime. It is necessary to carry out an independent international auditing of proper budgetary expenditures executed by the Head of Gagauzia.

I believe that by consolidation of structures of a democratic state based on the rule of law we can guarantee the rights of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri and resolve the problem of harmonization of interethnic relations on the whole in the Republic of Moldova. The policy of isolationism with regard to the Moldovan society applied by the Gagauzi or, vice versa, ignoring the rights of the ATE Gagauz-Yeri by the central authorities is equally destructive for the Moldovan statehood.

Chişinău

14 March 2002