The president of the Constitutional Court of Moldova (CC) Alexandru Tanase had a different opinion about the approval of the initiative to review the Constitution’s Article 70 concerning parliamentary immunity. Though he voted for approving the given bill, Alexandru Tanase published a separate opinion on his webpage, IPN reports.
The Court’s president considers the parliamentary immunity cannot be analyzed without taking into account the functionality of the political system of the country. “From this perspective, it is absolutely incorrect to treat the parliamentary immunity exclusively as a privilege offered by the Constitution to Parliament and as a possibility of avoiding criminal responsibility, ignoring the other dimension – the special procedure for protecting the MP form the abusive or insufficiently motivated actions on the part of the political power,” said Alexandru Tanase.
The CC president also wrote that given the state of democracy and justice in Moldova, the parliamentary immunity must be treated principally as an institution of constitutional law whose goal is to protect the MPs from repressive and arbitrary measures that could be taken by the political power and that could affect their independence.
“I think the bill authors’ intention to diminish the independence guarantees of the MPs, counting on an illusory result of greater integrity of the MPs, is erroneous. In the particular context of the Republic of Moldova, the vulnerability of MPs in relation to the repressive bodies of the state risks to affect the essence of parliamentarianism, as a system in which the Parliament elected by the people influences and controls the other bodies of the state. Ultimately, we can ascertain that we have neither parliamentarianism, nor MPs of integrity,” stated Alexandru Tanase, noting that he stated his reserves as to the elimination of parliamentary immunity in 2011 first.
Alexandru Tanase also wrote that most of the constitutions of the democratic states use the parliamentary immunity as an instrument of protection against repressive and arbitrary measures on the part of other powers, which can hamper the independent carrying out of the duties of MP. He gave examples quoted from the constitutions of Germany, France, Japan and other countries.
