Any document of the Constitutional Court (decision, judgment, opinion) pronounced based on a power stipulated by the Constitution is definitive and unchallengeable, as Article 140 of the Constitution provides. Consequently, the CC judgments concerning the election and removal of the Constitutional Court president cannot be challenged in court, the CC ruled after examining the requisitions of four MPs, Sergiu Litvinenco, Dinu Plîngău, Denis Ulanov and Sergey Sîrbu, IPN reports.
In a press briefing, CC president Domnica Manole said the constitutional judges noted that the dismissal of the CC president follows the same principles as those stipulated in the constitutional article on the election of the CC president by secret ballot. “The Constitutional Court’s power to elect or dismiss the president of the Court is related to its functional autonomy that derives from the constitutional guarantees of its independence. The election of the CC president underlines the sovereign and authoritarian character of the CC, while the relationship between the CC and its president is related exclusively to the public constitutional law,” stated Domnica Manole.
The Court held that no authority of the state, including the courts of law, can substitute the secret vote given by the constitutional judges when they elect their president. Moreover, the CC president is elected by judges who are in equal relations in front of each other, they being independent in the exercise of their vote. The absolutely personal choice made by the constitutional judges when exercising a constitutional power cannot be disputed.
The documents adopted by the CC cannot be censured in terms of their constitutionality or legality by any public authority, even if this is a court of law. The Constitution does not empower another public authority to examine a CC judgment and to declare it unconstitutional or illegal. An eventual judicial inspection of the CC documents would undermine the Constitutional Court’s role of guardian and its quality of independent body that obeys only the Constitution.
