Moldovan Liberal Democrats demand that MP Vlad Filat be allowed to participate in parliament plenary meetings

Chisinau, 10 March /MOLDPRES/ - The parliamentary faction of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLDM) today registered with the Standing Bureau a draft decision on the completion of the Parliament Decision from 15 October 2015 on the agreement of stripping MP Vlad Filat of parliamentary immunity. The PLDM lawmakers propose completing the decision with the words “excepting the hours when plenary meetings and meetings of the working bodies of the parliament, he is a member of, take place.”  

According to the Liberal Democrat MPs, Vlad Filat is a lawmaker and, under the norms provided for in the Supreme Law, nobody can interrupt or suspend the MP mandate. “Under the provisions of Article 16, paragraph 2, of the law on the statute of MP, the lawmaker’s participation in the meetings of the parliament and the standing commission, he is a member of, is compulsory. Similar stipulations are established also in the Parliament’s Regulation. The impossibility to exercise the mandate leads to its provisional ceasing, which runs counter the Article 69 of the Constitution. The emerged situation is also contrary to the constitutional principle from Article 68 of the Fundamental Law, which establishes the nullity of any imperative mandate,” MP Tudor Deliu said.  

Deliu noted that the parliament had the right and can strip an MP of immunity. Nevertheless, the lawmaker’s mandate cannot be interrupted or suspended, unless there is a final and irrevocable court decision on conviction. In these circumstances of law, the MP whose immunity was lift can be detained and arrested, yet on condition that the concerned lawmaker be able to fulfill his/her constitutional and legal duties of MP and he/she should be provided the needed conditions for possibility to take part in plenary meetings and meetings of the parliament’s working bodies.    

Lawmaker Vlad Filat remained without parliamentary immunity on 15 October 2015. Filat was escorted to the National Anticorruption Centre and detained on the same day in the evening.  

(Reporter A. Zara editor M. Jantovan)