10 ŽDANOKA v. LATVIA JUDGMENT Consequently, the court dismissed the applicant’s arguments to the effect that she was only formally a member of the CPL, did not participate in the meetings of its Central Committee for Supervision and Audit and that, accordingly, she could not be held to have “acted”, “been a militant” or “actively participated” (darboties) in the party’s activities. 41. The applicant appealed against this judgment to the Civil Division of the Supreme Court. On 12 November 1999 the Civil Division began examining the appeal. At the oral hearing, the applicant submitted that the content of the above-mentioned minutes of 26 January and 27 March 1991, referring to her by name, could not be held against her since on both those dates she had been carrying out her duties in the Latvian Supreme Council and not in the CPL. After hearing evidence from two witnesses who stated that the applicant had indeed been present at the Supreme Council, the Division suspended examination of the case in order to enable the applicant to submit more cogent evidence in support of her statements, such as a record of parliamentary debates or minutes of the Līdztiesība parliamentary bloc’s meetings. However, as the above-mentioned minutes had not been preserved by the Parliamentary Record Office, the applicant was never able to produce such evidence. 42. By a judgment of 15 December 1999, the Civil Division dismissed the applicant’s appeal. It stated that the evidence gathered by the Office of the Prosecutor General was sufficient to conclude that the applicant had actively taken part in the CPL’s activities after 13 January 1991. The Division further noted that the CPL’s dissolution had been ordered “in accordance with the interests of the Latvian State in a specific historical and political situation” and that the international conventions relied on by the applicant allowed for justified limitations on the exercise of electoral rights. 43. Following the Civil Division’s judgment, enforceable from the date of its delivery, the applicant was disqualified from electoral office and lost her seat as a member of Riga City Council. 44. The applicant applied to the Senate of the Supreme Court to have the Civil Division’s judgment quashed. She stressed, inter alia, the restriction’s incompatibility with Article 11 of the Convention. By a final order of 7 February 2000 the Senate declared the appeal inadmissible. In the Senate’s opinion, the proceedings in question were limited to a single strictly-defined objective, namely a finding as to whether or not the applicant had actively taken part in the CPL’s activities after 13 January 1991. The Senate concluded that it did not have jurisdiction to analyse the legal consequences of this finding, on the ground that this was irrelevant to the finding itself. In addition, the Senate noted that any such analysis would involve an examination of the Latvian legislation’s compatibility with constitutional and international law, which did not come within the final appeal court’s jurisdiction.

Select target paragraph3