Chisinau fielded three candidacies for ECHR judge

The Commission for selecting candidates for the post of judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) appointed on March 6 three candidates that are to be suggested to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which will name as judge one of them. According to sources from the Organisation "Jurists for Human Rights", the three candidatures are Victoria Iftodi, head of the Diplomatic Mission of Moldova to France, ex-minister of Justice, Victor Orandas, judge at the Chisinau Economic Court, and Lilia Vasilevici, judge at the Chisinau Centru District Court, former chair of this court. They have garnered respectively 10, 11 and 8 votes. Thirteen persons in all have fielded their candidacies in the contest, among whom: Galina Bostan, director of the Centre for Analysis and Prevention of Corruption; Mihai Buruiana, lawyer and university reader; Vasile Dolghieru, lawyer, ex-minister of Justice; Tudor Osoianu, university reader; Stanislav Pavlosvchi, incumbent judge of Moldova to ECHR; Ion Paduraru, lawyer, ex-minister of Justice; Igor Pohila, lawyer; Silvia Pogolsa, officer for human rights, OSCE Mission to Yerevan; Xenofon Ulianovschi, judge at the Chisinau Court of Appeals, and Veaceslav Zaporojan, deputy judge of the Constitutional Court. These candidates won 1-2 votes, while the incumbent judge on behalf of Moldova to ECHR received no vote. Twelve members of fourteen have participated in the Commission’s sitting. The Commission’s decisions were taken only on the basis of the files, without organising an interview, through an open voting with a simple majority. According to the annexe no. 2 to the PACE Resolution 1200, of 1999, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is to decide on the candidates for the post of judge at ECHR within 2,5 months after the candidates were fielded, but at least four months before the mandate of the incumbent judge expires. The next sitting of PACE will be held on April 16-19 and June 25-28. The incumbent judge at ECHR on behalf of Moldova is Stanislav Pavlovschi, whose mandate expires on November 1, 2007, if until this date the ECHR Protocol nr. 14 does not come into force, under the article 21, according to which on the date when the Protocol comes into effect the deadline of the mandate of judges who perform their first term-in-office is prolonged to attain a nine-year term.