Deputy Minister of Justice Nicolae Esanu expressed his concern about the fact that political legitimacy is invoked as a legal argument in the relations between the powers of the state. “We have state authorities whose mandate is stipulated in the legislation, while the powers of the President do not depend on the way this is elected – by Parliament or as a result of direct elections – and on how many votes he gained - 100% or a majority of votes. From legal viewpoint, this is a serious problem and we must have legal discussions on the issue,” the deputy minister said in the public debate “Relations between the branches of power in new conditions: between cooperation, early parliamentary elections, impeachment and …something else”, which was organized by IPN News Agency together with Radio Moldova.
Another problem highlighted by Nicolae Esanu is related to the President’s mandate. “I want to note that in accordance with the Constitution, the President must be apolitical and he definitely cannot be the representative of a political current. From this perspective, the Constitution provides the obligation to withdraw from the party. In other words, the President has a mandate that is defined by the legislation and this should obey the law when fulfilling his duties,” he stated.
As to the possibility of taking part in political debates, the deputy minister of justice said the President must not promote the political agenda of a party. Neither the Government nor the Ministry of Justice sees a problem in the relationship between the President and the other authorities. However, particular issues arouse questions, like the composition of the delegation that accompanied the President to Moscow, as this didn’t include a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and this is something unprecedented in the history of visits made by Heads of State.
“We didn’t take this as a political confrontation. The Government could modify the composition of the delegation, but accepted the proposed variant to show that this wasn’t examined through the angle of the possibly tense relations between the powers,” said Nicolae Esanu.
He also referred to the reports that the President rejected 11 candidates for judge. “For the Ministry of Justice, this is something unusual, but we didn’t consider this a confrontation,” he said, noting that despite the existing questions, we now cannot speak about an institutional crisis, but a political crisis is yet possible.
The public debate “Relations between the branches of power in new conditions: between cooperation, early parliamentary elections, impeachment and …something else” is the 69th installment of the series of debates “Developing political culture by public debates” that are organized with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
