The legislative body should explicitly regulate the mechanism for suspending or postponing elections, including without needing to declare a state of emergency in this regard. Otherwise, the electoral bodies are put in the disagreeable situation to maneuver between the need to obey the law and the necessity of ensuring the satisfaction of de facto critical argued public demands, which are de jure without legal reason for stopping electoral processes with potential to spread the epidemic infection. This is one of the conclusions reached by Promo-LEX’s Observation Mission that oversaw the March 15 new parliamentary elections in single-member constituency No. 38 Hâncești, in IPN reports.

In a press release, the Observation Mission said that it does not have the power to assess the level of implementing the measures to prevent and deal with the COVID19 infection, but, according to observers, the electoral bureaus were equipped with a minimum of hygienic products. However, it is hard to forecast eventual contamination risks.

The observers underline the electoral bureau members’ commitment to fulfilling the functional duties and also the behavior of responsible voters who, in this situation of informational uncertainty, chose to go to the polls and vote.

According to public reports, only one contender of the five competitors who remained in the electoral race requested the Central Election Commission to immediately annul the elections.

The conditions for postponing or annulling the electoral procedures are defined in the Election Code only in the case of national and local referendums. Articles 156 and 186 of the Election Code provide that if the date of the national/local referendum was set for the day for which a state of emergency, siege or war is declared later, the referendum is annulled or put off. This way, from legislative body, there are no norms that would enable to annul or postpone parliamentary elections. Under Article 66 of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova only Parliament can declare a state of emergency, siege or war in the country.