How to Remove the President from Office. Litvinenko Commented on Constitutional Court’s Decision

On August 6, MP from the Action and Solidarity (PAS) Party, Sergiu Litvinenco, commented on Constitutional Court’s decision about the possibility to remove the president. As the deputy noted, now the procedure of the president ‘s temporary suspension and resignation is clear and the removal of the head of state "for five minutes" will no longer be used. Litvinenko noted that, according to Constitutional Court’s interpretation, if the president violates the law, then to initiate the procedure for his temporary removal from office, votes of at least 34 parliament members are needed. The proposal of the deputies must be approved by the Constitutional Court. It must decide how serious the violation is. If the Constitutional Court decides that this is a grave violation, then the proposal to remove the president from office is returned to parliament, where it is put to voting. “If it gets 67 votes, the president will be temporarily removed from office. And in this case, a referendum on president’s resignation is to be organized within 30 days. The president is considered to be dismissed if the quantity of citizens’ votes is the same or increases the quantity of votes voted for him in the elections, but not less than half of the voters who took part in the referendum,” Litvinenco added. Let us remind you that in June Igor Munteanu, deputy from the Dignity and Truth Platform party, appealed to the Constitutional Court requesting to explain the procedure for appointing the candidate for prime minister if the head of state refuses to nominate the candidate proposed by the parliamentary majority. Today the Constitutional Court ruled that if the president refuses to approve the candidacy of the head of the cabinet proposed by the parliamentary majority, then the deputies can start the procedure for his removal from office and resignation. It should be noted that over the past three years, the Constitutional Court has removed President Igor Dodon from office six times after he refused to sign certain laws or appoint ministers. Clarification NM: there was an inaccuracy in the description of the procedure for president’s removal and resignation in the original version of the news. NM made changes to the text of the news. We apologize to readers