Parliament adopted amendments to the Election Code by which the bans on running in elections for members of parties declared unconstitutional are individualized. The bill stipulates several criteria for compiling the list of persons who are banned from running, IPN reports.
The head of the Parliament’s legal commission for appointments and immunities Olesea Stamate said in Parliament that the bill was designed to execute the decision taken by the Constitutional Court on Tuesday and, respectively, to implement the recommendations formulated in that decision.
“There are three important aspects that this bill treats and that are dictated by the Constitutional Court’s decision. One of the aspects is the ensuring of individualization so that a collective restriction is not imposed on particular categories of representatives of a party that was declared unconstitutional. The second aspect is the possibility of challenging in court – that effective remedy that is also required by the Council of Europe standards. The third aspect is the shortening of the period of the restriction, which is mentioned in the Constitutional Court’s decision, and this will be shortened to three years,” stated Olesea Stamate.
This way, persons who when the CC passed as decision by which a political party was declared unconstitutional met at least one of the set criteria will be unable to run in elections. For example, persons who were classed as suspects or were accused or found guilty of committing offenses that were used as an argument by the CC when the party was declared unconstitutional, and persons who were excluded from the electoral race earlier, following the deliberate violation of the principle of legal financing, or were put on international sanctions lists – arguments that were mentioned in the Constitutional Court’s decision.
Under the bill, the General Police Inspectorate, the National Anticorruption Center, the Security and Intelligence Service and the Prosecutor General’s Office will provide the Central Election Commission with information about persons to whom these criteria apply. For its part, the CEC, based on this information, will adopt the list of persons who cannot be registered as election contenders and will present it to the electoral bodies that will refuse to register the mentioned persons as election contenders or will annul the registration of the contender if this was already registered. These decisions by the electoral bodies can be challenged in the Chisinau Appeals Court.
The ban on standing as a candidate at elections will be valid for three years of the day the CC adopts a decision by which a party is declared unconstitutional.
The bill was supported by the votes of 57 MPs and is to be given a second, final reading. The legislative amendments will take effect when they are published in the Official Gazette.
