The Constitutional Court (CC) does not have powers to examine and determine the presence or absence of violations in elections. This is within the remit of the Central Election Commission. It’s time to empower the CC to validate the local elections too, besides the parliamentary and presidential elections in Moldova, university professor Nicolae Osmochescu, ex-judge of the Constitutional Court, stated in the public debate “Legislative and political, internal and external solutions to the conflict situation generated by invalidation of Chisinau elections”, which was the 92nd installment of the series “Developing political culture by public debates” staged by IPN News Agency.
The professor said the Constitution, the Election Code and other ordinary laws enable to appropriately organize and hold elections. The way in which the norms are interpreted and in which a penalty is imposed is a problem. In the case of the Chisinau elections, all the three courts penalized not the participants in the competition, but the about 300,000 voters who took part in the elections, depriving them of their fundamental political right to choose and be chosen.
“What happened showed that a norm that didn’t even materialize in the law system and the case law of the Republic of Moldova was interpreted erroneously, extensively,” he stated, adding something like this happened in Europe and probably globally too for the first time as there were no cases when the elections were invalidated for such reasons and with such arguments. The professor noted that everything is done in any society is based on an economic problem. Politics, law and other aspects are secondary and derive from the economic problem.
“How can a judge, even if this is talented, who is a specialist in law, not in information technology, establish how and to what extent the postings on Facebook influence the elections without the assistance of experts?” asked the judge.
Referring to the relations with the foreign partners, Nicolae Osmochescu said these partners cannot say directly what the Moldovan authorities should do as it will be interference in the internal affairs if they formulate recommendations and this can be used to the disadvantage of elections. At external level, the adoption of political decisions and the organization of debates in the permanent bodies of European institutions can produce solutions to the election invalidation problem.
The debate “Legislative and political, internal and external solutions to the conflict situation generated by invalidation of Chisinau elections” forms part of the series of public debates staged by IPN News Agency and Radio Moldova within the project “Developing political culture by public debates” that is supported by the German Hanns Seidel Foundation.
