Parliament recently approved an amendment to the Presidential Election Law, which banned an impeached president's presidential nomination for five years since his resignation. A group of MPs promptly questioned constitutional compliance of the amendment in the Constitutional Court.
Paksas was dismissed from presidency, April 6, for bad constitutional trespasses and disloyalty to his presidential oath. The High Election Commission proceeded from the new amendment as it refused to register him for the pre-term race. The Liberal Democratic parliamentary group, which was backing Paksas, initiated 29 MPs' inquiry with the Constitutional Court. As the protesters assumed, parliament had no sufficient grounds to extend constitutional qualifications of presidential hopefuls. Paksas' elimination from the race came as another reprisal against him, though dismissal through impeachment was sufficient punishment, they argued.
Unregistered for the election, Rolandas Paksas has shrugged off his absence of official status for a dynamic campaign countrywide.
The Constitutional Court decision is final, and whatever attempts to override it will be not merely doomed to failure but downright destructive, Gediminas Mesonis, assistant professor of the Vilnius Juridical University, Chair of Constitutional Law, pointed out to the National Radio.
Parliament dismissed Rolandas Paksas from presidency last month as it tracked down Yuri Borisov, Russian national resident in Lithuania, financing his pre-election campaign-a good turn for which the president rewarded the moneybag by granting him naturalisation on an exclusive arrangement.
