After President Igor Dodon earlier today announced his refusal to accept six ministerial candidates for a second time, a group of MPs asked the Constitutional Court to pronounce whether circumstances exist for another official to act as a caretaker president and approve the nominations.

“We’ve asked the Court to speed-track the examination of this request, so that by old-style Christmas we could have an absolutely functional Cabinet”, said Democrat Sergiu Sirbu.

Vetoing the candidates proposed in the recent Cabinet reshuffle, President Dodon said he could not accept people with “integrity issues” and “who were directly or indirectly involved in the bank fraud”. However, he accepted the resignations of the outgoing Cabinet members.

The Constitution allows the president to reject a ministerial candidate once, but not for a second time if the same candidate is proposed. In a similar situation, when President Dodon double-rejected Eugeniu Sturza’s nomination as minister of defense, the Constitutional Court allowed Speaker Andrian Candu to temporarily act in President Dodon’s stead.