Sonila Bejtja, the seventh member of the Constitutional Court, will be sworn in by the President on Tuesday.
Bejtja was decreed on Monday by President Meta as a member of the Constitutional Court. She ran for the vacancy left by former member Besnik Muci in November 2019.
Altin Binaj and Zhaklina Peto also applied for this position. Binaj was elected a member of the CC, after running for another post. While Peto has sued KED after claiming that she was excluded from the race in violation of the law.
KED’s decision to compile a list of only one candidate is a violation of the Constitution and the law on the Constitutional Court.
Article 125 of the Constitution provides that the members of the Constitutional Court are selected from the candidates ranked in the first three places, from the list of KED.
“Members are selected from among the candidates ranked in the top three on the list by the Judicial Appointments Council, in accordance with the law.”
This is reinforced in the Law on the Constitutional Court, where Article 7 / c provides for the procedure for electing members of the CC by the President of the Republic.
“The President, within 30 days of receiving the list from the Judicial Appointments Council, appoints the judge of the Constitutional Court from the candidates listed in the first three places of the list.”
Thus KED had to compile a list of three names for the race to be considered valid, otherwise, it had to notify the president to reopen the race. This has not happened in the last three cases of appointees to the court.
