Opposition was too slow, Constitutional Court Chairman says
“The opposition has failed to collect in time the evidence on rigging the April 5 parliamentary election results”, Constitutional Court Chairman Dumitru Pulbere stated to the press on Wednesday night after the Court had officially recognized the election returns as valid.
Pulbere explained the Constitutional Court had scrutinized in all aspects the electoral documents and materials submitted to it, including by opposition parties, but “the materials, which the opposition had collected to prove the election falsification, failed to be presented in due time. The opposition was supposed to send its protests to the Central Election Commission, district election boards and to pass all law-stipulated stages of judiciary instance. If the opposition had submitted all such documents, the Constitutional Court would certainly give its assessment of them. But such proofs failed to be presented, whereas the protests the opposition has sent to the Court were insufficient. In such situation, the Constitutional Court decided to recognize the 2009 parliamentary election results as valid”.
He explained that there exist law-stipulated strict rules and timing for recognizing elections as valid or not. The Electoral Code contains a clear regulation of all stages of electoral process, in particular their duration, deadlines and so forth, “so one should not convert the electoral process into chaos”.
Asked what he believes is more important – a procedure or a viable, efficient parliament, Dumitru Pulbere replied, “Above all is law!”
Asked why the Constitutional Court did not put off its decision on recognizing the election results so as to give the opposition several more days to present evidence of electoral swindling, the Court Chairman offered a counter-question: “And you think other proofs were to be presented according to law? We all must obey to the law. And if we demand from somebody to abide by law, we ourselves must observe the law”.
Pulbere evaded answering if some Court Judges had offered their separate or special opinion on the issue. He only said there exists a law-stipulated secrecy of discussion, and he may not betray it.
Dumitru Pulbere also said that the 21 newly elected members of Parliament having a second citizenship had applied for renouncing the second citizenship before the law-stipulated deadline of April 21.
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