The goal is to eliminate a potential risk of rigging the competition for the position of prosecutor general, said the head of the Parliament’s legal commission for appointments and immunities Olesea Stamate, commenting on the amendment to the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office, according to which the future prosecutor general will be selected based on a majority of votes of members of the Superior Council of Prosecutors (SCP). The official noted that Moldova already witnessed the rigging of competitions for various public positions and, by amending the law, they intend to avoid such a scenario when the future head of the Prosecutor General’s Office is chosen, IPN reports.
According to a bill to amend the law on the Prosecutor’s Office, which was proposed by PAS MP Igor Chiriac, the future prosecutor general will no longer be selected based on the score accumulated for professionalism and integrity, but by a majority of votes of SCP members. Olesea Stamate considers amending the law in this regard is inopportune.
“I’m not the author of this legislative initiative and, personally, I believe that there is no need to amend the law of the Prosecutor’s Office at this moment. We have all seen how public competitions for various positions were held and how the contests were rigged, with zero points for candidates who performed very well. Therefore, I intuit that the author’s intention is to eliminate such a potential risk. But there are various ways to avoid this risk. There is the possibility of excluding extreme scores,” Olesea Stamate stated in the program “Resumé with Ileana Pîrgaru” on RliveTV channel.
The official noted that the author of the initiative to amend the law on the Prosecutor’s Office aims to exclude a potential risk of rigging of the competition for the position of prosecutor general.
“We have a Superior Council of Prosecutors that has just passed pre-vetting. I want to trust the SCP members to stage e a transparent, merit-based contest. This is also what the European Union asks us to do, saying that the Republic of Moldova must ensure the conduct of competitions, especially in the justice sector, transparently and according to merit. It is not about distrust in the current composition of the SCP, but about the risk of rigging the contest, which is demonstrated by the experience of recent years, when various competitions were organized,” said Olesea Stamate.
On December 29, 2023, the deadline for submitting files to the competition to fill the position of prosecutor general expired. According to the SCP, six candidates applied to take part, including the current acting deputy head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office Octavian Yakimovski and current acting prosecutor general Ion Munteanu.
