Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat became acting president automatically at the moment the first session of the new Moldovan parliament was convened, the Moldovan Constitutional Court told Interfax.
“This is stipulated by the Constitution, and there is no need to adopt any legislative acts. If there had been a legitimately elected president in Moldova, he would have continued performing his duties until the new parliament elected a new president. However, Moldova had an acting president, parliamentary speaker Mihai Ghimpu. His powers expired at the moment the mandates of the newly elected parliamentarians were recognized and the first parliamentary session was convened. When the new parliament elects a speaker, the presidential duties will be delegated to him. For the time being, the prime minister is acting president,” the court said.
Filat said in an interview that he was disappointed that a parliamentary majority was not put together and a parliamentary speaker was not elected on December 28th. A two-day recess has been announced in the first session of the new Moldovan parliament at the Democratic Party’s request, and it will continue until Dec. 30.
Meanwhile, negotiations on setting up a ruling coalition continued on Wednesday. Democratic Party leaders met with members of the Party of Communists, after which Democratic Party leader Marian Lupu met with Liberal Party leader Mihai Ghimpu. Then Lupu, Ghimpu, and Filat held a tripartite meeting.
A simple majority of 51 seats is enough in the Moldovan parliament to form a government and other governing bodies, but the votes of at least 60% of all the deputies, i.e. 61 out of the 101 votes, are necessary to elect a president.
There were no clear winners at last November’s Parliamentary elections. Moldova is in a long deep political crisis, started in April 2009, and some observers see risks for its future as an independent state. Recently, Romanian president Traian Basescu said that “in the next 25 years Romania and Moldova could be united again.” The Transdniestrian region broke away from Chisinau when USSR collapsed at the beginning of the Nineties.