Representatives of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections call on the subjects that can file challenges to the Constitutional Court (CC) to take a draft challenge from www.alegeliber.md and register it with the High Court. The challenge formulated by members of the Association “WatchDog.MD” Community asks to interpret the Constitution’s norms in five fundamental aspects that refer to the criteria that can lead to the invalidation of elections.
In a news conference at IPN, executive director of the Association for Participatory Democracy ADEPT Igor Botan said the document is well formulated and argued and is ready to be taken and registered with the CC. The request to pronounce on the validation or invalidation of elections by courts of law in the absence of an argued application to annul the elections, accompanied by pertinent proofs on which it is based, submitted by voters, electoral bodies or electoral competitors who took part in the elections is very important.
“We performed exercises to understand how the courts adopt decisions. For example, if no one files an application to court, demanding to annul the elections, how can the court determine that the elections were rigged? If it says that the elections were rigged, it should probably say how the elections were influenced, positively or negatively? Why the court decided that the outcome of the election in Chisinau was influenced? If the election outcome was influenced, the Court should say to whose detriment or to whose benefit this occurred,” stated Igor Botan.
He noted that the CC did good work in December 2016, when it adopted the decision on the validation of the election of the President: a) set four criteria that should be examined together in the case of invalidation of elections; b) plus the six requests to Parliament to eliminate the shortcomings from the electoral and related legislation. The authors ask the Court to determine which of the six requests were fulfilled.
Promo-LEX programs director Pavel Postica said the given challenge is a product that can be regarded as criticism against what happened in the local general elections and also as aid, especially to the Parliament’s legal commission for appointments and immunities, which is to present a very clear analysis as to what happened in the local general elections in Chisinau and why they were invalidated in the middle of September.
“It is a legal opinion we support and try to promote. We think this challenge will be of assistance to the Parliament’s commission and can be regarded as a primary document from which they can start,” stated Pavel Postica. He noted that the period until the upcoming elections contracts and all the state authorities should be more receptive and examine the situations covered by the challenge so as to remove the shortcomings from the electoral legislation and make sure that the future elections will take place freely and fairly and citizens’ votes will not be thrown to the garbage bin, as it happened in the elections in Chisinau.
The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections consists of 35 nongovernmental organizations.
