On Sunday, April 30, the residents of the Autonomous Territorial Unit (ATO) Gagauzia as part of Moldova will vote for a new head of executive power, Turanews.kz reports.
The four-year term of office of the current head of the ATO, Irina Vlakh, has ended.
Polling stations opened at 07:00 local time. You can vote in 65 polling stations until 21:00 local time.
92 thousand 516 voters are registered in Gagauzia. More than half of them must come to the polls in order for the election of the New Head to be recognized as valid.
The voting process in Gagauzia will be monitored by 21 national and 75 international observers, including those from the EU, Turkey, Azerbaijan, the USA, Ukraine and the UK.
In addition to the Head, two deputies from the Valkanesh and Chok-Maidan constituencies of the ATO Gagauzia will be elected to the People’s Assembly (representative and legislative body of the ATO of Gagauzia). Members of the CEC of Gagauzia will report on the voting process every three hours.
According to the law on elections in the ATO Gagauzia, Bashkan candidates must be over 35 years old, live in Moldova and know the Gagauz language.
There are eight candidates for the head of the region. To win in the first round, one of them must gain more than 50 percent of the vote. If none of the candidates gets that many, then a second round of elections will be organized in two weeks.
Elections for the head of the ATO, who is also an ex officio member of the Government of the Republic of Moldova, are held every four years.
Since the incumbent governor, Irina Vlah, was elected to this post twice, this time she did not participate in the election race in accordance with the election law.
Among the candidates are the former Bashkan of the ATO Gagauzia and the Moldovan Ambassador to Ankara Dmitry Croitor and the former Bashkan Mihail Formuzal.
All candidates in the framework of the election campaign focused on “peace and stability in the region.”
In the Gagauz ATO with a population of about 120 thousand people speak the Gagauz language, which genetically belongs to the Oghuz subgroup of the Turkic languages.
Gagauz gained the right to autonomy in 1994 with the assistance of Türkiye. Most of the population of ATO Gagauzia professes Orthodoxy.
