All the judgments of all the constitutional courts from the world have political valences, while the Parliament of Moldova is the only authority that can amend the Constitution, the President of the Constitutional Court of Moldova Alexandru Tănase said in an interview entitled “There are essential differences between judgments of the Constitutional Court of Moldova and political attitudes”, which was given to IPN News Agency and was published on March 14. The CCM President addressed mainly critics who say that the Court’s judgment has a political valence and that it is only for the Parliament to operate amendments to the Constitution, not the Constitutional Court.
”All the judgments of all the constitutional courts from the world have political valences. As long as a constitutional court may trigger changes being brought to a law or annul it, which in fact is the expression of political will, any decision of it may have political valences. The Constitutional Court’s judgment of 4 March 2016 is subject to criticism by a small circle of persons criticizing all the decisions of the Court, no matter the subject-matter brought before the Court. Moreover, I sadly notice that many of those who comment on this issue have not even read this judgment of the Court. Let me put in other words: political attitudes and rationale differ from the judgments of the Constitutional Court, as the former ones do not need legal arguments,” stated Alexandru Tănase.
He confirmed that it is only the legislative body that can amend the Constitution, while the CCM pronounces on the constitutionality of the laws adopted by this. “No doubt, the Parliament is the one that can amend the Constitution. The Constitutional Court ruled, after 2010, that under certain circumstances, the Constitution may be also amended by way of referendum. The Constitutional Court does not have such competences and I cannot see how it could. At the same time, the Constitutional Court is the sole authority empowered by the Constitution to undertake constitutional review of laws passed by the Parliament, including laws amending the Constitution,” said the President of the CCM.
He noted that the Constitution cannot be amended without Constitutional Court’s Opinion or when the latter is ignored or exceeded. “It is exactly out of this rationale that the framers of the Constitution laid down in Article 141 of the Constitution that constitutional draft laws may be submitted to the Parliament only following the Opinion of the Constitutional Court. Subsequently, the Constitutional Court is the sole authority of constitutional jurisdiction entitled to check whether its opinion is observed and to invalidate laws passed by the Parliament in disregard of these opinions. Even, as a consequence, invalidating a law amending the Constitution leads implicitly to the elimination from the Supreme Law of a text introduced by constitutional fraud, this procedure should by no means be considered an amendment of the Constitution. In essence, it is a quite a simple legal issue, even if the impact is quite big,” Alexandru Tănase said in the interview for IPN.
By its 4 March 2016 judgment, the CCM invalidated the amendment concerning the method of electing the President of Moldova made to the Constitution 16 years ago. Then, the Constitutional Court delivered an Opinion on the draft law providing for the Head of State to be elected with the majority of the elected MPs (51 votes out of 101). However, the MPs brought substantial changes to this draft law, including another majority – 3/5 of MPs (61 votes out of 101).