In its decision that confirms the results of the presidential elections, the Constitutional Court (CC) formulated six notes addressed to Parliament for removing the shortcomings existing in the electoral and related legislation, IPN reports.
The Court held that owing to the defective implementation of the legislation by common law courts, the electoral players were deprived of efficient judicial control, while the CC was confronted with the impossibility of using documents to ascertain the violations. The Court asked Parliament to clarify the legislation concerning the examination of challenges about the organization and conduct of elections. In particular, it recommended working out separate and explicit regulations on the challenge examination procedures for different types of elections.
Given that a large number of Moldovans abroad were unable to vote, the CC requested the legislative body to modify the voting mechanism abroad and to apply additional criteria for determining the number and geographical distribution of polling places. Another note refers to the establishment of additional criteria for determining the number and geographical distribution of ballots abroad, including for providing the polling places with an extra number of ballots.
The Court also ascertained that the Penal Code does not contain the phrase “presidential elections” in the article about voter corruption and recommended Parliament to eliminate this shortcoming.
As the state authorities responsible for the electoral process and the activity of religious denominations didn’t honor their obligation to hamper and penalize the involvement of religious organizations in the election campaign, the CC requested the legislature to institute mechanisms for promptly and immediately penalizing any such involvement attempt, including criminally.
The Court also underlined the necessity of instituting instruments that will enable the responsible authorities to impose immediate execution penalties such as suspension of the right to broadcast during the election campaign in case of media outlets that violate the impartiality principles in the electoral period.
The Constitutional Jurisdiction Code of Moldova provides that if the Constitutional Court identifies shortcomings in the legislation while examining a case, it notifies the competent bodies of them by a notice so that they remove these.
