The amendment of the Constitution in 2000, by which the method of electing the President of the Republic of Moldova was modified, produced perverse effects for the stability of the state institution and generated the effect of “captive state”, the President of the Constitutional Court of Moldova Alexandru Tănase said in an interview entitled “There are essential differences between judgments of the Constitutional Court of Moldova and political attitudes”, which was given to IPN News Agency and was published on March 14.
According to Alexandru Tănase, the essence of the amendment introduced by Parliament without the Constitutional Court’s Opinion was that the Court delivered an Opinion on the draft law providing for the Head of State to be elected with the majority of the elected MPs (51 votes out of 101). However, the MPs brought substantial changes to this draft law, including another majority – 3/5 of MPs (61 votes out of 101).
“A first perverse effect of the quota of 3/5 was the people’s will being substituted with the occult will of some circles of interest and political groups. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe called this – the “captive state” effect. A second perverse effect was a total distortion of the political process, so that decisions on the appointment of the Head of State were not an election of the leader of the state, but rather a vote out of obligation to avoid losing the benefits of an MP seat in case the Parliament is dissolved. Actually, there had been instituted an election mechanism by constraint,” stated Alexandru Tănase.
He noted that the most troubling effect was that of a chronic institutional instability and of an infinite dissolution of Parliament due to failure to elect the President. “The system created by this reform imploded the whole political specter of 2005. In order to avoid Parliament dissolution, political parties with totally different doctrines were, in fact, forced to vote for the then President, distorting the vote received from the electorate,” said the President of the Constitutional Court.
The cost of that amendment was the destruction and vanishing of a number of political actors, including some historical parties as since 2009 there had been a period of nearly 3 years of ad interim, which amounts to almost a full mandate of a President. “Under those conditions, could one speak of checks and balances, when legislative and executive powers were overlapping throughout a full mandate almost? It is just a tiny part of multiple perverse effects generated by the constitutional fraud of 2000. Perpetuation of that system could have led to chronic instability or other obscure solutions, totally lacking transparency, thus depriving a President eventually elected by Parliament from any legitimacy in the eyes of citizens,” Alexandru Tănase said in the interview for IPN.
