Election of the President and the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court will be held
On Wednesday, 6 May, at 2pm, the Constitutional Court will sit to elect the President and the Vice-President of the Court.
In view of the emergency situation declared in the state to limit the spread of COVID-19, the election of the President and the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court will be held remotely in video conference mode.
The Court sitting will be streamed on the Constitutional Court’s website and youtube channel:
Since 8 May 2017, the office of the President has been held by the Constitutional Court Justice Ineta Ziemele; the Constitutional Court Justice Sanita Osipova has been the Vice-President of the Court since 16 May 2017.
The duties of the President and the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court include organising the administrative work of the Court, chairing the Court sittings, as well as representing the Court at the national and international level.
The election procedure
The election is held in an open court sitting. The candidates for the positions of the President and the Vice-President are nominated during the court sitting. Each candidate states whether they agree to be nominated.
The President and the Vice-President of the Constitutional Court are elected by the Constitutional Court justices from among themselves by secret ballot, with an absolute majority of votes of all the Court’s justices, for the term of three years.
As stipulated by the Rules of Procedure of the Constitutional Court, if several candidates for the office of the President or the Vice-President have been nominated and none of them gains the necessary number of votes during the first round of election, the justices vote a second time on all candidates. If nobody is elected again, the voting continues, excluding from each successive round of voting the candidate credited with the smallest number of votes in the previous round, until one of the candidates gains the necessary number of votes.
If the necessary number of votes is not gained in the last round of voting or if only one candidate for the respective office has been nominated and fails to gain the number of votes needed to be elected, the nomination of candidates starts anew. The justices who were nominated for the previous rounds of election and failed to gain the necessary number of votes may be repeatedly nominated as candidates.