The MPs in Moldova didn’t adapt the electoral system in accordance with the recommendations formulated by the Constitutional Court in December 2016 as these documents contain sensitive elements for Moldovan society, programs director of Promo-LEX Association Pavel Postica noted in the public debate “Why wasn’t the Constitutional Court heard in the problem of presidential elections?” that was organized by IPN News Agency.
Pavel Postica underlined that the responsibility for the implementation of those recommendations is borne by Parliament, but the previous governments and the current government also did nothing to solve these systemic problems.
“It probably goes to matters related to the image of those players that will assume responsibility to come and make changes not only over these very sensitive issues. We must admit that both the role and the involvement of the church in the social and political life in the Republic of Moldova are a rather sensitive issue. We must admit that the involvement of the mass media, no matter who the employer is and who is officially or unofficially behind them, is also a rather sensitive issue for the Republic of Moldova. Namely for these reasons, the political players decided not to do anything in relation to the amendment of the electoral legislation. This is probably simpler,” stated Pavel Postica.
He also said that if the six recommendations of the CC are not implemented, the constitutional judges could invalidate the upcoming presidential elections. “I fear that if such situations repeat at the same pace at which they were challenged in the presidential elections of 2016, we could find ourselves in the situation when the Constitutional Court will invalidate the elections. In such a case, the CC will have sufficient arguments to say that it underlined the problems and offered time to solve them, but nothing was done,” he said, noting these problems were perpetuated and allowed to influence the elections.
Pavel Postica noted that the Central Election Commission plays a key role in this case even if there is another CC judgment saying that amendments to the Election Code cannot be made within six months of the next elections. The Central Election Commission on its table has a relevant bill that it could have discussed long ago so as to improve it and submit it to Parliament.
The debate “Why wasn’t the Constitutional Court heard in the problem of presidential elections?” was the 132nd installment of the series of debates “Developing political culture through public debates” that are supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.