An incomprehensibly written request may not attract the attention of the authorities – Respublika.lt

An incomprehensibly written request may not attract the attention of the authorities. Photo of Elta

The draft amendment to the Petitions Law, which provides for it, was registered on behalf of the Seimas Petitions Commission by its president, the conservative Edmundas Pupinis.

According to the draft, “a request that is not clear and incomprehensible will not be considered by decision of the Petitions Committee and will be notified in writing to the applicant or their representative within 5 business days.”

“The adoption of this amendment would make it very clear that the proposals presented in the application must be set out in a clear and understandable way. Otherwise, they will not be considered. At the same time, the applicant will have the right to correct the deficiencies of their application”, says the draft.

According to them, the purpose of the reforms to the law is to specify the provisions of the law that regulate the procedure for the implementation of the right to petition guaranteed by the Constitution. The Law on Petitions has been in force and has been applied in Lithuania for 20 years.

“During this period, it has been observed that it is quite common for petitions to be written in a vague, incomprehensible and illegible way, making it impossible to address the issue of admissibility of petitions, since the Law on Petitions requires a proposal, it is not possible that the petition commission present its arguments as to why the petitioner’s proposals or claims should be considered unfounded, ”says the Seimas Petitions Committee in the explanatory note to the document.

The project also clarifies the provisions regarding the registration of appeals and the participation of applicants in the meetings of the Committee on Petitions.

According to the project, all applications must be registered in the corresponding register of documents of the institution to which the application was submitted (forwarded), the applicant or his representative will be notified in writing of the register without delay, but no later than within 3 business days, indicating the registration number and the date.

The Constitutional Court in 2006 January 26 In the resolution on compliance with the Law on Petitions with the Constitution, it was stated that the legislator has the duty to regulate the relations of petitions not by means of a legal act, but by means of a law that establishes all the most important elements of the procedure for the exercise of the right to present a petition; to which public authorities a petition can be submitted; the formal requirements that the petition must meet; the procedure for filing a petition; the procedure for making and appealing decisions to refuse to accept a petition, etc.

The current Law on Petitions stipulates that the request must indicate the name, surname, place of residence, personal identification code of the petitioner; the authority to which the request is made; a request for recognition of the request, the reasons and purposes of the request; the requirements and suggestions of the applicant; the name, surname, personal identification number, place of residence and, if available, telephone and fax numbers of the applicant’s representative.

Currently, the Law on Petitions establishes that the petitioner can appeal to the Seimas, the Government or the municipal council, respectively, within a period of 1 month from the date of receipt of the notification of the decision not to recognize the petition or refuse to accept the request. petition.

Current law also provides that a decision of the Seimas, the Government or a municipal council to refuse to satisfy a complaint against a decision of the Committee on Petitions not to recognize a petition or not to accept a petition may be appealed to a court in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Law.

ELTA has already announced that the Seimas Board has discussed the signatures of more than 360 thousand citizens collected at the initiative of the public and delivered to the Spokesperson of the Seimas Viktorija Čmilyte-Nielsen, calling for the resignation of Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius, Chairman of the Rights Committee Humans of the Seimas.

The members of the Seimas Board had different opinions on whether it was signatures, a petition, documents or lists. Vytautas Mitalas, vice president of Seimas, representing the Freedom Faction, proposed to state by decision of the Seimas Board that these documents do not contain personal signatures or other necessary requirements that allow keeping those documents as a petition under the Law. .

The Seimas Board intends to assess this with a public statement, but it was decided to postpone the issue for next week.