Court Upholds Election of Gagauzia’s Pro-Russian Governor 

Wednesday, 24 May, 2023

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Piotr Garciu

Comrat-based journalist

An appeals court has validated the election of pro-Russia candidate Evghenia Guțul as governor of Moldova’s autonomous region of Gagauzia, despite evidence of electoral violations including voter bribery after the May 14 run-off.

Guțul, 37, won 52 per cent as the pro-Russia Șor party candidate and had pledged to seek closer ties between the autonomous region and the Russian Federation. The Moldovan government sees Gagauzia, a predominantly Turkic region of around 140,000 people, as Moscow’s political foothold in the country and a means to destabilise internal national politics.

Chișinău’s EU membership bid and support for Ukraine has angered the Kremlin, which since February 2022 has intensified an aggressive hybrid warfare campaign against Moldova. The new bashkan - governor in the Gagauz language - may offer Russia new opportunities to undermine the pro-European central authorities.

The May 22 court of appeals decision in Comrat, Gagauzia’s administrative centre, can still be appealed to Moldova’s Supreme Court of Justice, but experts argued that the electoral violations should have been tackled earlier, after the first round of April 30. 

Vladislav Culminski, executive director of the Institute for Strategic Initiatives (IPIS), said that the underlying issue was the long history of corruption in the Șor party. 

“I think that the best way to deal with such violations is to cut off the sources of dirty finance,” he said 

Guțul represents the party founded and led by Ilan Șor, an oligarch convicted for fraud in connection with the 2014 bank heist, Moldova’s largest ever, who has fled to Israel to evade arrest and a 15 year jail sentence.

“I hope Chișinău has enough courage and resources to declare these elections invalid."

Valery Pasha, executive director of the  WatchDog NGO, warned that Guțul’s victory would further hamper relations between Comrat and Chișinău.

“[Ilan] Șor will try to use Gagauzia as a means of pressure on Chișinău; he will even try to develop separatist sentiments, which, obviously, will not improve relations,” Pasha said.

Culminski agreed, adding that the Șor party could use the position of the governor “to undermine the legitimately elected [central] government”. 

He argued that the voters had been motivated by cost-of-living concerns, rather than a desire to undermine Chisinau.

“I understand why residents voted the way they did, the socio-economic situation is difficult,” Culminski continued. “But the centre [government] needs to stop these attempts to use Gagauzia against the Moldovan authorities.”

Following searches of the Șor Party’s election campaign offices, law enforcement agencies found evidence of bribes, with supporters receiving 760 US dollars for 30 votes. Guțul has never reported the salary costs of her employees in official documents.

Investigators also inspected Gagauzia’s Central Election Commission and seized voter lists, finding that both deceased citizens and people who were abroad were registered to have voted in the run-off.

On May 16,  Șor party supporters in Comrat surrounded the court’s building, while regional assembly deputies gathered for a special session to adopt a resolution recognising Guțul as bashkan. 

Irina Vlah, the pro-Russian incumbent governor, avoided taking a position. 

“If any violations are revealed, we can report about them. If violations are not revealed and they try to cancel the results of these elections, this will be direct and harsh interference in the electoral process in the autonomy,” Vlah told IWPR when approached after casting her vote in Comrat on May 14, when rumours about fraud began circulating.

Comrat-based journalist Mikhail Sirkeli said that the election results should be discounted as the “votes were bought”. 

“I hope Chișinău has enough courage and resources to declare these elections invalid, if the local court fails to do it…Decisive actions from Chișinău to invalidate these elections will be an act of protecting the status of Gagauzian autonomy and nothing else,” Sirkeli wrote on his Facebook page.    

MOSCOW”S INFLUENCE

Russia cast a long shadow over the elections. While in the previous polls in 2015 Moscow supported only Vlah, in these elections it backed several politicians, including Guțul and her second round opponent Grigory Uzun, who stood for the pro-Russian Socialist Party. Moldova’s ruling pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), did not put forward a candidate.

Pasha noted that Uzun had not filed any complaints of fraud or objections about the results, adding, “It is clear that Mr Uzun was simply told from Russia to ‘sit still’.”

The Kremlin also backed the staunchly pro-Russian independent candidate Viktor Petrov, indicating their support via a series of meetings with Rustam Minnikhanov, president of Russia’s Tatarstan Republic. 

On April 17, Minnikhanov flew to Chișinău en route to Comrat  - where he was due to speak at a rally in support of Petrov  - but was refused entry by the Moldovan border police.

“Our people believe in a dream."

In a statement the police said that “[Moldovan] authorities ask Russian bureaucrats to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of our country”.

Guțul was virtually unknown until March 22 when the Șor party put  her name forward. The last-minute candidate’s face, however, appeared on posters across every town and village in Gagauzia in a matter of days. Fellow party members campaigned for her openly stating that a vote for Guțul was the same as voting for Șor. 

The chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and member of the State Duma Leonid Slutsky recorded a video endorsing Guțul, hailing the fact that “Gagauzia will have a female bashkan for the second time in a row”. Well-known Russian singers also recorded videos voicing their support for her.

Her campaign was officially the most expensive of all the candidates, with the first round costing her and the party about 1.7 million leu ( 96,000 dollars).

Guțul ’s lack of experience did not seem to worry Gagauzians.

“Maybe Șor will do something. I didn’t know much about the other candidate. We are not sure about Șor either or what he can do, he is not even in Moldova,” Anna Gaidarzhi, a voter in Comrat, told IWPR. 

Her vocal alignment with Moscow also appeared not to deter many voters. 

“I care more about the things they can do, we all understand that we [Moldova] are unlikely to be politically close to Russia ever again. We are close to each other mentally, that’s it. I understand that the EU’s economy is stronger,” Gennady Fakaly, a resident of the village Congaz, told IWPR, adding that the growing popularity of the Șor party was related to their promises. 

“Our people believe in a dream. If candidates promise to create jobs and raise pensions, voters would not even listen to them. But, they would believe promises of an airport or a Disneyland-like amusement park,” Fakaly continued, in a reference to a project, nicknamed GagauziaLand, that the Șor party has vowed to build.