The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) was brought under control by suspending the prosecutor general and his deputies. “The Government needed this institution to gain an instrument, a weapon, including a political one,” Vasile Bolea, a member of the parliamentary group of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists (BCS), deputy head of the legal commission for appointments and immunities, stated in IPNs’ public debate “Venice Commission’s Opinion: signal of alarm about state of rule of law or call to improve democratic processes?”.
According to the BSC MP, the system now works by order of the government. “This is confirmed by the attack on the president of the SCP, Missis Motuzoc, who faces suspension for at least half a year following the institution of administrative proceedings against her. These are actions taken by order to intimidate persons and they are harsher than during the time of Plahotniuc,” stated Vasile Bolea.
The MP explained there is a political-legal conflict between the suspended prosecutor general and the government and the experts of the Venice Commission could see this when they paid a visit to Chisinau. The conflict resides in the fact that the suspended prosecutor general didn’t want to fulfill instructions that came from the Presidential Office or from those who are now in power. Alexandr Stoianoglo refused to start political criminal cases against leaders of the current opposition, such as Vladimir Voronin, Igor Dodon, and Zinaida Grechanyi.
“The Venice Commission is an important institution that watches over the observance of unanimously recognized principles. It can formulate opinions on the real situation and carry out assessments, can speak about political conflicts existing in a country, which led to the adoption of laws that violate some of the principles. In this case, the laws violate unanimously recognized principles and unbalance the system in general,” stated Vasile Bolea, noting that by its opinion on the law on the prosecution service, the Venice Commission urged to return to the previous situation when there was a particular balance between the forces and inside the system. “The unbalancing of any system leads to deviations that cause damage to society”.
The BSC MP criticized the lack of vision and strategy concerning the justice sector reform. “When we want to build a house, we need a plan that is designed by the architect and based on which we erect the walls of the future house,” stated Vasile Bolea. “In the case of the justice sector reform in the Republic of Moldova, the government does not have such a plan. The Government didn’t work out a strategy to this effect and President Maia Sandu sent back to Parliament the strategy thought up by the previous government that the current government does not want to amend and implement.”
The public debate titled “Venice Commission’s Opinion: signal of alarm about state of rule of law or call to improve democratic processes?” is the 219th installment of the series of debates staged as part of the project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates”. The project is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
