The Cabinet didn’t support the draft Parliament decision concerning the setting up of a working group for designing a bill on the modification of the Constitution so that this envisions the dismissal of MPs, IPN reports.
As it was noted, the goal of the legislative proposal is to put into practice the result of the national consultative referendum of February 24, 2019 that was confirmed by the Constitutional Court ruling of March 14, 2019.
The Constitutional Court in its case law said only the constitutional and legislative referendums produce mandatory legal effects, not yet those that are consultative in character. Following the organization of consultative referendums, the authorities can take note of the people’s opinion about a problem of national interest without having yet a juridical obligation. As to the possibility of dismissing MPs by the voters, Article 68 of the Constitution provides that the MPs are in the service of the people and any imperative mandate is null.
The irrevocability of the parliamentary mandate is a generally accepted basic principle of European democracies that is promoted by the Venice Commission. In this connection, in its Resolution No.1303(2002) on the functioning of democratic institutions in Moldova, the People’s Assembly of the Council of Europe requested the Moldovan authorities to clearly stipulate in the legislation the principle of irrevocability of the parliamentary mandate. The Venice Commission estimated that the possibility of removing MPs by the voters or by parties is incompatible with the generally accepted traditional doctrine of representative democracy and is contrary to the European norms.
The idea of reducing the number of MPs from 101 to 61 wasn’t supported either. The executive said the current number of MPs is optimal for ensuring the efficient work of the legislature and corresponds to the country’s size, its territorial subdivisions and form of government.
