Constitutional Court president: Parliament must be dissolved by September 28

Acting President Marian Lupu is obliged to dissolve Parliament by September 28, Constitutional Court president Dumitru Pulbere has told Info-Prim Neo. “On September 28, it is a year since the last dissolution of Parliament. If the President of Moldovan hadn’t been elected within this term during a year, regardless of the reason – the head of state couldn’t be elected by the first and second rounds of voting, or the issue was not included in the agenda – the Acting President of Moldova is obliged to dissolve Parliament and call early elections. This is the law. I invented nothing,” said Dumitru Pulbere. He also said that from September 28, all the decisions adopted by Parliament can be considered unconstitutional. “It is not my blame or the blame of my colleagues that the politicians do not read the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which are mandatory for Parliament. I base my judgments on the constitutional law,” said the chairman. Asked to say what constitutional provisions he referred to, Dumitru Pulbere named paragraph 3, Article 85 of the Constitution. Constitutional law expert Corneliu Gurin stated for Info-Prim Neo that Dumitru Pulbere is somehow right because the Parliament, by the Constitutional Court’s decision of this February, was to set an exact term within which the head of state must be elected. “The legislative body has not yet implemented that decision and delayed examining the issue, but this matter cannot be postponed endlessly,” said the expert. According to constitutional law expert Vitali Catana, the Constitution does not stipulate the term invoked by the president of the Constitutional Court. “The Constitution says clearly that the Parliament must be dissolved if the head of state is not elected. Article 78 is the only one that describes the method of electing the head of state, but is does not specify the term of one year. It is a reasonable timeframe and the Court had the possibility of specifying this term once, but avoided to,” said Vitali Catana. Paragraph 3 of Article 85 of the Constitution (Dissolution of Parliament) says the legislative body can be dissolved one time during a year.