Today, Kestutis Cilinskas, HRMI Board Chair, and Henrikas Mickevicius, HRMI Executive Director, issued a public statement expressing deep concern about the recent ruling by the Constitutional Court.
On 9 February, the Constitutional Court ruled that the provision of the Law on the Elections to Municipal Councils which allows candidates to run for election only if they are on electoral lists created by political parties in contradiction with the Constitution. Despite this conclusion, the Court has declared that municipal elections set up for 25 February should proceed without interruption.
The ruling had been adopted in response to the appeal by the High Administrative Court. This Court must decide on petitions by an individual and a non-partisan association of Vilnius residents who were denied the right to be registered as candidates by the Central Electoral Committee. Petitioners complain that mandatory party membership as an eligibility criteria that unjustifiably restricts the right to stand for municipal elections.
HRMI raises doubts whether the ruling lies within the powers of the Constitutional Court (CC). Both the Constitution and the Law on Constitutional Court allows the CC to rule exclusively on legal matters, i.e. whether statutes and understatutory legal acts comply with the Constitution.
In the current case, having declared that the contested legal provision contradicts the Constitution, the CC has nevertheless ruled that the elections should proceed in accordance with the invalidated law. The validity of the later decision is doubtful as it goes beyond the powers ascribed to the CC by the law and encroaches upon the powers of the political branches of government. It also undermines the public credibility of the CC and its decisions.
Full text of the public statement (in Lithuanian) see here. See also the internet daily Bernardinai and internet portal Infolex.
© 2012 Human Rights Monitoring Institute