The leader of the political group “For People, Nature and Animals” (PONA) Ion Dron said the Ministry of Justice and the Public Services Agency refuse to register the political party with the same name, blocking this way the democratic process in the Republic of Moldova.
In a news conference at IPN, Ion Dron said that the PONA group consisting of seven persons in February 2018 filed an application to have the party registered to the Ministry of Justice. In April the same year, the Ministry of Justice refused to register it for the reason that the list with the 4,000 collected signatures and the list of the at least 18 local organizations founded in districts weren’t presented.
The group considered that those provisions of the law on parties were unconstitutional and ran counter to Article 11 of the European Convention and challenged the decision in national courts of law. On February 25 this year, the Constitutional Court accepted the exception of unconstitutionality and held that the ceiling of 4,000 signatures and the principle of formation of parties according to territorial administrative criteria are unconstitutional.
Following this decision, the Appeals Court on June 24 allowed registering the Party “For People, Nature and Animals”. On July 9, the Ministry of Justice and the Public Services Agency were issued with a requisition to execute the court decision. In almost a month of the filing of that application, with the legal time limit being of 15 days, the Public Services Agency provided a response, saying that it cannot register the party for the reason that the file transmitted to the Ministry of Justice didn’t reach the Agency.
“Today, the Ministry of Justice tells us that it cannot transmit the party’s file submitted in February 2018 to the Public Services Agency because this cannot be found. The registration refusal exists, but the file cannot be found. We have all the reasons to suspect that the Ministry of Justice is lying,” stated Ion Dron.
The Appeals Court’s decisions are implementable, but can be challenged. The Ministry of Justice and the Public Services Agency filed an appeal. As the transmission of the file takes time, they decided not to implement the court decision on the registration of the party.
Ion Dron noted that they know from reliable sources that people representing the President’s staff insist that the Supreme Court of Justice should decide in favor of suspending the decision to register PONA.
Ion Dron called on the Ministry of Justice to take action in this case.
