Moldova’s Constitutional Court and the rule of law in the country have become a political battleground for Moldovan politicians ever since the former Socialist President, Igor Dodon, lost his bid for a second presidential term and returned to being leader of the pro-Russian Socialist Party, PSRM.
On Wednesday, the Court ruled that the state of emergency introduced by the parliament dominated by Dodon’s Socialists on April 1 was illegal.
The state of emergency was the only remaining technical obstacle preventing Moldova’s new pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, from dissolving parliament and calling new elections.
Just an hour after the court ruling, Sandu signed the decree dissolving parliament and announcing early elections on July 11.
Dodon sounded defiant. “If you want elections, we are going to have elections!” he said. “We are ready to face this political challenge and to show that the Socialist electorate is trustworthy, morally strong and understands very well who and what it represents in domestic and foreign policy,” he added.
He also accused Sandu of dismissing the parliament “on the orders of her Western coordinators”.
“Sandu and her political satellites are launching the country into an election campaign right at the height of a pandemic,” he argued.
However, official statistics show that the number of COVID infections is falling fast. Moldova also received recently hundreds of thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sputnik V vaccines, and the national vaccination rollout is accelerating.
Coordinated assault on ‘politicized’ court
The recent wave of attacks and pressures on the Constitutional Court started on April 23, when Dodon ordered his parliamentary majority to unleash a political “blitz” on the court, accusing it of politicization.
“With its recent decisions, the Constitutional Court has become a political tool in the hands of usurping politicians when they need a political solution, bypassing the constitution,” he said on April 27.
In just a few hours, the Socialist parliamentary majority and allied Ilan Shor Party pushed through a series of controversial decisions.
aFirst, they adopted a political declaration condeming the alleged usurpation of state power by the court. They then passed a no-confidence vote in three of the five judges. Finally, they voted to revoke the mandate of the President of the Court, Domnica Manole.
A former President of the Court, Nicolae Osmochescu, told BIRN it almost amounted to a coup.
“It was a severe and brutal violation of the constitution … a failed coup attempt. The action was premeditated because half of the 54 deputies who voted are lawyers,” he said.
It did not the attack lying down. On April 23, the court suspended the decision voted in parliament as above the law and on April 27 it dismissed the parliamentary votes entirely.
In the meantime, hundreds of people gathered every day after President Sandu asked her supporters on April 23 to come out and defend the state institutions from what she called “the abuses of the corrupt parliament”.
“This is an unprecedented attack on the constitutional order and the independence of the Constitutional Court. I have asked law enforcement agencies chiefs not to be involved in unconstitutional actions and not to comply with illegal orders,” she added.
Defeat followed by call for negotiations
Since the Constitutional Court overruled parliament’s controversial decisions, Dodon has tried to solve the issue with Sandu at the negotiation table, still hoping to postpone the inevitable dissolution of parliament and snap elections in which polls suggest his party will not do well.
“I propose an institutional dialogue between parliament and the presidential institution urgently, and the joint establishment of the date for early elections,” Dodon wrote on Facebook on Monday.
Igor Botan, a political analyst and director of ADEPT, a Chisinau-based NGO, told BIRN that Dodon launched his attack on the Constitutional Court, knowing that parliament is a collective body that cannot be punished.
“So, he started this attack. [But] after seeing the reactions of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission, the European Commission, he is retreating and now he wants dialogue,” Botan said.
Western condemnation was strong. The US State Department on Tuesday voiced concern about the attacks on the court, calling them an act that undermines the independence of an institution that “only recently regained its independence after being captured by the state for years”.
US diplomacy urged all Moldovan politicians to “respect the rule of law, to defend democratic institutions”.
The European Council President Charles Michel echoed this view, warning that “Parliament’s actions against Moldova’s Constitutional Court are a clear attack on its independence”.
Botan notes that the latest series of attacks on the court date back to December 2020, when Dodon lost the presidency.
In his last days as President, Dodon ordered his party to vote in express fashion controversial laws on the status of the Russian language in Moldova, making it easier to broadcast Russian propaganda on Moldovan TV stations and other media.
One by one, these controversial laws were cancelled by the court, however, angering both Dodon and the PSRM.
Meanwhile his party’s ratings have fallen. Polls at the beginning of this year showed a significant drop in support for the Socialists after Dodon lost the presidential race.
The same surveys showed a rise in public trust for Sandu and her former pro-European party, the Action and Solidarity Party, PAS.
It is this reality that changed Dodon’s mind about parliament’s dissolution and early elections.
Meanwhile, he has tightened his alliance with the party of the fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, and obstructed any attempts to dissolve the legislature.
The political offensive then moved to the Constitutional Court, which came under sustained pressure from the Socialists.
“The last months of pressure by the Socialists on the court aimed to intimidate President Sandu. However, now the last episode is over,” Botan observed, referring to events on Wednesday, when the court ruled that the state of emergency was above the law, and undid parliament’s decision.
This was the last procedural step giving Sandu a free hand to trigger the early elections she wants.
The war is not over yet
“This desperate action by former President Dodon shows his inability to understand exactly what is happening in society,” a former Constitutional Court President Alexandru Tanase told BIRN.
“[He has] an inability to accept that he is no longer the head of state and fails to accept that his party will go into opposition, a normal game in a democratic regime,” the former justice minister added.
Any transition of power in Moldova always takes place in a very “painful way”, and not in an orderly way as in other countries,” Tanase said.
“In Moldova, the party that comes to power considers it has a messianic mission, and any president considers himself ‘deus-ex machina, a divine messenger, and when he has to leave he makes this a personal drama. That is what happened to Dodon,” Tanase added.
Vladislav Gribincea, director of Legal Resources Centre in Moldova, a Chisinau-based NGO, told BIRN that the animosities between the big political actors in Moldova will not fade away soon.
“The disagreements among the political leaders are the consequences of the inefficient dialogue between them. I think these issues will continue. The question is what their impact will be and whether politicians will bear the consequences of their behaviour,” Gribincea said.
He added that this episode over the Constitutional Court won’t leave the Socialists unharmed.
“The polls will show if this manoeuvre was a good one or not. But given that more than 60 per cent of citizens want early elections, any vehement opposition to this will likely cut the branch from under those sitting on it,” he concluded.
Botan agreed. He told BIRN that Dodon and the PSRM lost popularity from their attacks on the Constitutional Court, and that the fight on left in the elections will be a tough one, pitting the PSRM, the Ilan Shor Party, the Our Party led by the populist leader Renato Usatii and other small parties against one another.
“Dodon has also changed the PSRM’s ideology,” he observed. “Since January, it no longer looks like a party with a social democratic doctrine but a conservative party, copying Vladimir Putin’s United Russia,” he concluded.
Madalin Necsutu
https://balkaninsight.com
