The six recommendations of the Constitutional Court formulated on December 13, 2016 as a result of the presidential elections, concerning the electoral legislation, were implemented partially or weren’t implemented at all, Pavel Postica, programs director at Promo-LEX Association, stated in a public debate entitled “Why wasn’t the Constitutional Court heard in the problem of presidential elections?”, which held by IPN News Agency.
“We tried for many times to draw attention to this problem. Every time they spoke about the amendment of the electoral legislation, we drew attention to the Constitutional Court’s recommendations issued in December 2016, which generated a number of questions as to the quality of the electoral process,” stated Pavel Postica.
The expert said the recommendation concerning the mechanism and conditions of opening polling stations abroad remained unimplemented. The Court requested the legislative body to amend the mechanism for voting abroad and to institute additional criteria for determining the number and geographical distribution of polling stations. Another recommendation referred to additional criteria for determining the number and geographical distribution of ballots abroad, including the provision of an extra number of ballots to polling places.
The programs director of Promo-LEX noted that their association has rather insistently demanded, both on national platforms and on international platforms, that the authorities should solve these problems, but the opinions formulated by the constitutional judges were mainly overcome. “Only a part of these problems were dealt with partially. Only three of them were somehow solved and only one recommendation was fully dealt with, the one concerning the number of ballots intended for a polling station abroad, this being increased from 3,000 to 5,000. Most of the recommendations remained partially unsolved. Two of them were partially solved and three weren’t solved”.
Another matter concerns the corruption of voters that earlier didn’t carry penalties. This was partially dealt with. “A rather simple formula was applied and penalties were introduced into the Penal Code, including for the corruption of voters. But the problem of organized transportation of voters remained unsolved. As a result, the quality of the parliamentary elections of February 2019 was affected and this was seen in the two single-member constituencies established for voters from the Transnistrian region,” opined Pavel Postică.
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.