Tanase: Constitution Obliges the President to Nominate a Candidate for Prime Minister

The Constitution does not contain any provisions that would allow the president not to appoint the prime minister for any reason, Alexandru Tanase, former President of the Constitutional Court, said. According to the expert, since a qualified parliamentary majority capable of electing a government was not formalized after the Chicu government was dismissed, the President of the Republic of Moldova is obliged by the Constitution to nominate his or her own candidate for the post of Prime Minister, unimedia.info writes. "According to Article 98 of the Constitution, the appointment of a candidate for the post of Prime Minister is not only the competence of the President, but also a constitutional obligation. The Constitutional Court has consistently ruled on this fact, and the last decision in this regard was made on August 6, 2020. The Constitutional Court's logic is extremely clear: without nominating a candidate for the post of prime minister, the government cannot be included, and all institutional mechanisms allowing to form the state power will be blocked. Thus, since a qualified majority capable of giving the government powers after the resignation of the Chicu government, the president of the republic has a constitutional obligation to nominate his or her own candidate for the post of prime minister. The constitution does not contain any provisions that would allow the president not to appoint the prime minister for any reason. Even if the president does not nominate a candidate for prime minister within 3 months, there is no reason to dissolve parliament. Article 85 explicitly provides that the President of the Republic of Moldova can dissolve parliament only if it is impossible to form a government. In this case, the term "impossibility" should be understood as the political inability of the parliament to create a government, and not as the president's refusal to "nominate a candidate for the post of prime minister." According to the doctrine, as well as in accordance with the constant CC legal practice, the dissolution of parliament is a sanction imposed on it for the inability (or unwillingness) to exercise certain powers in the process of forming the government. I do not see how such a sanction could be applied, because the mechanism of forming the government itself did not work. Under these conditions, even if within three months the president does not nominate a single candidate for the post of prime minister, I do not understand how the Constitutional Court can establish the existence of circumstances justifying the dissolution of parliament, as provided for by paragraph f) of Article 135 of the Constitution," Alexandru Tanase explained.