The Constitutional Court is to determine the constitutionality of the legislative amendments by which there were set new incompatibilities with the seat of local elected official. The challenge was filed by unaffiliated MP Mihai Godea. He asserts that the changes made by the legislative body generated multiple situations of conflict, misinterpretation and defective application of the law towards some of the local elected authorities, IPN reports.

Last July, Parliament decided that the seat of local elected official is incompatible with the post of employee of subdivisions of the local public administration (the staff of the raion head, mayor’s office, district head’s offices of Chisinau municipality, divisions, sections and other subdivisions), including of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia and Gagauzia’s Executive Committee, as well as with the post of head and deputy head of public institutions and services, municipal enterprises that are managed by the local public authorities.

Mihai Godea said these changes limit and violate the constitutional rights of the local elected officials and the constitutional provisions concerning local autonomy and the functioning of the local public authorities. “By the amendments made ad-hoc to the legislation, a considerable number of local elected officials are forced to renounce the seats won in the local general elections of June 2011 because they hold different jobs in institutions that are subordinate or affiliated to the local public authorities,” said the lawmaker. Mihai Godea also said that the adoption of a law that affects the local elected officials without consulting them represents violation of the basic principles of the local public administration.