Volume 9 Numbers 1/2

Winter/Spring 2000

Constitutional Watch
     A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR

Moldova - As the last issue of the EECR went to press, President Petru Lucinschi was trying to push his second candi-date for prime minister, Vladimir Voronin, through the Parlamentul (parliament). (See Moldova Update, EECR, Vol. 8, No. 4, Fall 1999.) Voronin is the leader of the Moldovan Communist Party (MCP), parliament's largest party, holding 40 of its 101 seats. On December 7, however, Moldova was spared the distinction of being the first former Soviet republic formally to hand back its government to the Communists. Parliament rejected Voronin. An angry President Lucinschi threatened to dissolve the assembly and call early elections. To add weight to his threats, on December 13, he asked the Constitutional Court to spell out in detail the procedures by which he could dissolve the legislature and call early elections. (The next parliamentary elections are due in 2002, but most local observers believe they will be held early, along with presidential elections, in the fall of 2000.)

Fearing the loss of their seats, on December 22, most deputies scrambled to support Lucinschi's third choice, Dumitru Braghis, a 43-year-old former commu-nist leader, now turned businessman. Braghis was the last first secretary of the Moldovan SSR's Komsomol, from 1988 to 1991, when Lucinschi was the Communist Party's first secretary. The nonpartisan cabinet formed by Braghis depends on MCP votes and, to a lesser extent, on the votes of the Christian Democrat Popular Front, recently renamed the Christian Democrat People's Party (CDPP).

Moldova's problems are many and daunting. They include an unsolved energy crisis: the republic is almost completely dependent on energy imports from Russia, Romania, and Ukraine since the bulk of its energy-producing capacities are located in the break-away Transnistrian republic. Moldova's energy debts have skyrocketed to $400 million, three-quarters of which is owed to Russia's Gazprom. Equally serious are huge external debts whose repayment deadlines are fast approaching; social unrest due to salary and pension arrears; rock-bottom living standards (the lowest in the former Soviet Union); and falling industrial output. In short, the Braghis cabinet, self-described as a "govern-ment of national salvation and sacrifice," has inherited an insolvent fisc and a downward-spiraling economy. Because of its political instability, Moldova has also forfeited substantial IMF and World Bank credits of $65 million. Winning the support of international financial organizations will be difficult for a govern-ment dependent on MCP support.

As some observers have noted, the new govern-ment's proposed program reflects its uneasy position suspended between MCP's lukewarm support for meaningful change and the root-and-branch reforms advocated by the international community. The govern-ment program pays only lip service to reforms, concentrating instead on measures such as subsidizing agriculture, rooting out corruption and tax evasion, slimming down the state bureaucracy, paying wage and pension arrears, and pegging wages and pensions to the inflation rate. The program echoed some of MCP's political and economic goals, unveiled at its national conference in December, for example, preserving the state's monopoly in the energy industry and over the main export-oriented agricultural crops. In fact, MCP declared that its support for the new government was conditional on the latter's delaying economic reforms and reorienting Moldova toward the Commonwealth of Independent States, rather than toward neighboring Romania or the European Union.

Because of the change in government, parliament failed to adopt such key bills as the 2000 budget. Deputies did adopt, on October 14, in its first reading, a new law on advertising. The bill, proposed by the outgoing Sturza cabinet at the request of the Union of Moldovan Journalists, requires all advertisements to be in Romanian and makes distributors responsible for the ads' content and grammatical accuracy. The Alliance of Democratic Reforms (ADR) supported the bill in an effort to ensure that Romanian will replace Russian as the preferred marketing language. MCP opposed the bill to no avail, claiming it "discriminated against ethnic minori-ties and thus ran counter to the Constitution." In response, the government complained that all periodicals use Russian in their advertising, despite the 1989 language law, which reads "advertising texts and other texts of visual information must be written in the official language and, if need be, can be accompanied by transla-tion into Russian." To date, the language law, which sought to roll back Moldova's Russification, has been largely ignored. On October 29, the Interethnic Relations and Linguistic Department, the body responsible for the law's implementation, requested the authority to fine violators. The Russian-language Moldovan press denounced the various legal changes. In response, parlia-ment announced it would consider alternatives.

In related news, on November 18, the Ministry of Education announced that, beginning in 2000, Romanian language and literature would be included on university entrance exams because "all students- regardless of their ethnicity-must know the language and culture of Moldova."

The ethnic question also surfaced in a different context, on October 22, when parliament voted on amendments to the territorial and administrative reor-ganization law of December 1998. The amendments granted county status to the former Taraclia raion, a southern region populated primarily by ethnic Bulgarians. Taraclia was originally slated to be part of Cahul county, which is populated primarily by ethnic Moldovans. Critics denounced the proposal, claiming that the changes could lead to the dissolution of the Moldovan state. The amendments, however, were adopted with support from MCP and the Bloc for Democracy and Prosperity in Moldova (BDPM). CDPP and Party of Democratic Forces (PDF) deputies walked out of parliament in protest. In its presentation to parliament, the government argued that the amend-ments were necessary to avoid social unrest in southern Moldova. MCP claimed that recognizing distinctive counties, such as Taraclia, and autonomous regions, such as Gagauzia, would indirectly impede Moldova's reunification with Romania (a policy supported by various groups, including the rightist CDPP).

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The final months of 1999 saw the Constitutional Court reviewing several projects for constitutional change. On October 14, exercising preliminary review, the Court endorsed a draft law that would expand the govern-ment's powers. The law allows the government to ask parliament for permission to adopt important laws in emergency situations and prohibits parliament from revising the state budget without government approval. The proposed law is an attempt to preempt President Lucinschi's still-more-radical ambitions to transform Moldova into a full-fledged presidential republic. (For the latter, see Moldova Update, EECR, Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 1999.) Now that it has been deemed constitu-tional by the Court, the draft law can be submitted to parliament for approval within the next six months.

On November 16, the Court found that another, more radically antipresidential proposal was also within the bounds of the Constitution. The bill in question, another parliamentary initiative, would have the presi-dent elected by the deputies, rather than by the public, as is now the case. Moreover, the head of state would also no longer have the right to initiate legislation or chair government sessions. In addition, the law would limit the president's authority to represent the republic at the international level and to appoint ambassadors.

The president's office, which has developed its own constitutional-reform plan to pare back parliament's powers, naturally denounced both of these constitutional proposals and voiced its dissatisfaction with the Court's decisions, although pledging to abide by them.

The president was further disappointed by the Court in the long-running battle over the constitution-ality of Lucinschi's May 23 referendum on transforming Moldova into a presidential republic. (See Moldova Update, EECR, Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 1999.) Petitioners claimed that, by organizing the referendum, the president had encroached on several of parliament's prerogatives. On November 3, the Court annulled the May 23 referendum and spelled out the procedure for organizing consultative referenda. It found that the president may (according to Art. 88 of the Constitution) call for such referenda, but that parlia-ment has the final say as to whether a referendum will be organized. The Court wrote that "only parliament can modify the Constitution, directly or indirectly." The Court also found that the president may initiate constitutional revisions only if the proposals are. presented to parliament and endorsed by at least four of the seven justices on the Constitutional Court. Parliament must vote on the proposed constitutional changes within six months of their submission, and the changes require a two-thirds vote for adoption. After the Court decision was made public, Lucinschi announced reluctantly that he would abide by it. For their part, deputies hailed the decision, claiming that it averts the "danger of a dictatorship" in Moldova.

On November 19, in another decision, the Court accepted a government plan to place the procuracy under the Ministry of Justice's jurisdiction and to curtail the former's responsibilities drastically. The Sturza cabinet had called for changes to Art. 124 of the Constitution, which states that the procurators "exer-cise control over the exact and uniform implementation of laws by public officials, juridical bodies and their agents." According to the amendments, the procuracy will henceforth aim to "protect the general interests of society, public order, citizens' rights and liberties, bring charges, and participate in penal trials." The statutes governing the procuracy were also modified by parlia-ment, allowing the procuracy to investigate public officials only if it has reasonable grounds to suspect them of breaking the law. Moldova amended these statutes, which had remained unchanged since the republic's independence, at the specific request of the Council of Europe. Not surprisingly, these amendments were bitterly opposed by the Procurator General's Office, which argued against the weakening of procura-torial power given the recent upsurge in criminality.

Relations with the Council of Europe may soon sour, however, over the government's continued refusal to recognize the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church (BMC). The BMC's repeated requests for recognition were rejected by the Moldovan government on several occasions (in October 1992, March 1996, August 1996, and March 1997). In 1997, the Supreme Court over-turned an appeals-court decision affirming the BMC's right to be registered. But the Supreme Court's decision was based on a procedural issue and did not consider the merits of the case. Moldova's accession to the Council of Europe, in July 1995, allowed BMC to pursue its complaint in the European Court of Human Rights. BMC filed its case on June 3, 1998; the case was registered on January 26, 1999 (The Bessarabian Metropolitanate and the Exarchate of the Country and 12 Others v. the Government of Moldova, No. 45701/99). On November 10, 1999, the Court sent a list of questions to the Moldovan government; answers were due by February 2, 2000. The government filed its response at the last minute, again rejecting BMC's plea for recogni-tion. Governmental officials have stated that, even if the state loses the case, it would still not register BMC, despite the fact that such recalcitrance would jeopardize Moldova's standing in the Council of Europe.

This issue is politically sensitive. Following Moldova's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, the Orthodox Church in Moldova split, dividing between those who advocated continued subordination to the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and those-in effect, BMC-who advocated restoring allegiance to the Romanian Patriarchate in Bucharest. BMC views itself as the legal and canonical successor to the pre-Second World War Romanian Orthodox Church in Bessarabia (the part of Moldova between the Nistru and Prut rivers). Moldovan government sources acknowledge that official recognition of BMC is primarily a political matter, given its allegiance to Bucharest. Successive Moldovan govern-ments have consistently supported the wing of the church that remains allied to Moscow, refusing thereby to recognize the Bessarabian jurisdiction.

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