ŽDANOKA v. LATVIA JUDGMENT 61 their rights will be limited (see Khan v. the United Kingdom, no. 35394/97, ECHR 2000-V). On the other hand, we strongly believe that such restrictive measures should be temporary in order to be proportionate. In this case the restriction imposed on the applicant seems permanent in that it is of indefinite duration and will continue until legislation putting an end to it is adopted. More than ten years after its initial concerns, we cannot accept that the Latvian parliament still believes that former CPL members are a threat to democracy. And if this is so, if former members of the CPL were and still are a real threat and danger to democracy, why has the parliament failed to enact legislation providing for their permanent ineligibility? We consider that the Latvian parliament should have decided to impose a time-limit on these restrictions since such limitations on the right to free elections, as we have already mentioned, should exist only for a specific period, a period of vulnerability for a newly established regime. On that basis, we believe that the ineligibility procedure introduced as a result of the Constitutional Court’s interpretation was not sufficient, since it did not allow the courts to assess whether a person represented a real threat and danger to democracy. On the other hand, the very same Constitutional Court in its judgment of 30 August 2000 urged the legislature to periodically reexamine the need to maintain the disputed measure. Furthermore, the applicant had never been convicted of a criminal offence, she was not one of the fifteen members of parliament who were removed from their seats and there was no evidence that she herself had committed any acts aimed at undermining the new regime. Having regard to all the above, we strongly believe that the permanent restrictions on standing for election to the Latvian parliament imposed on the applicant on account of her former membership of the Communist Party of Latvia violated her right to free elections.