War, Gazeta de Moldavia transformed itself into an official platform for the anti-unionist camp. After the retreat of Russian troops and an interval of Austrian administration, Moldavia and Wallachia's government came under the direct supervision of various European powers, and Kaymakam Teodor Balş ensured the interregnum in Iaşi. In this context, Ottoman authorities, through the voice of Fuat Pasha, gave their approval for relative freedom of the press to be legislated. With Costache Negruzzi, Asachi again became an official censor, while again assuming the offices of archivist and inspector of Moldavian schools. As the Treaty of Paris imposed the creation of ad hoc Divans, through which the two countries' inhabitants were allowed to decide their future, the unionist camp saw a chance for fulfilling its goals; Asachi and his associates reacted vehemently, and, in May 1857, complained to the Porte that unification would bring about various perils. One month later, the government of Kaymakam Nicolae Vogoride carried out an electoral fraud to yield a separatist majority in the ad hoc Divan — Asachi, who supported Sturdza's bid for the throne, is thought to have played a major part in bringing this about, and, together with Vogoride himself, Nicolae Istrati, and the Austrian consul Oskar von Gödel-Lannoy, to have drawn up falsified the electoral lists. He was himself a candidate in the Iaşi electoral college, receiving 197 votes and placing himself second among the representatives it sent to the Divan. His magazine stood alone in claiming that the regime had acted impartially. The suffrage was hotly contested and annulled through an agreement between the Second French Empire and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; Asachi himself was thus forced to note that the new elections in August managed to overturn the previous results. He was no longer elected a deputy, and his candidature for the position of secretary of the electoral board was awarded just one vote. In 1858, Gazeta de Moldavia was entirely dedicated to political subjects and support for Vogoride's policies, and ceased print in October, as the Kaymakam ended his mandate. In late November, it reemerged under the title Patria, which continued to criticize Partida Naţională from a conservative position, notably hosting articles by the anti-unionist Istrati. As a new regency of three was preparing elections, the magazine rallied with Ştefan Catargiu, Asachi's lifelong collaborator and the separatist representative in the body of kaymakams, against the