The quality of the arguments of the Constitutional Court when a judgment is passed is the Court’s best defense against interference and political pressure. If the arguments are logical and well-founded, the CC will be respected by the government, the opposition and the citizens, expert Igor Boțan said in a public debate titled “Constitutional Court swaying in the political wind: norm or deviation?”, which was staged by IPN News Agency.
The IPN project’s standing expert noted that when the opposition MPs filed requisitions to the CC, the ruling parties reacted. Everyone could see those clichés placed by the politicians of the Socialist parliamentary group on the CC for the reason that it accepted those applications. This is unacceptable pressure on the part of politicians on the Court. Igor Boțan called on the politicians not to resort to such pressure as the subjects that can go to the CC cannot be prevented from doing this.
“Anyway, the Court will take a decision or another and particular interpretations will follow. If this is favorable for the application authors, the CC will be stigmatized for playing their game. If the decision is the opposite, it will be stigmatized for being subject to pressure and for being afraid to take a free and independent decision under political pressure,” stated the expert.
According to him, the political statements and pressure are counterproductive as the constitutional judges are not robots, but humans. “Any person, either judge or an ordinary person, if this is brutally intimidated, has two options – to yield to pressure or not to yield to pressure and to provide clear arguments. Also, the Court’s judges should say who intimidates them and should adopt an independent and impeccably argued decision. Everything depends on the quality of the Constitutional Court’s arguments. If the Court wants to be respected by the government, the opposition and the citizens, the quality of its arguments should be impeccable,” stated Igor Boțan.
“The question is, why do the political parties attack the Court so vehemently and the judges are put in the situation to declare publicly that they are threatened. The crisis starts from here, another one than that related to the pandemic or the economic crisis. It is a system crisis as, when a part of the judges say they are followed, a crisis persists in this system.”
The expert noted that the politicians realize that Moldova has modest development potential and the country should thus behave exemplarily before the international institutions, such as the Council of Europe and the Venice Commission, which can help Moldova overcome the pandemic crisis and the economic crisis. “We must be yet interested in overcoming this crisis situation,” said Igor Boțan.
The debate “Constitutional Court swaying in the political wind: norm or deviation?” was the 131st installment of the series of debates “Developing political culture through public debates” that are supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.