language) Judges are appointed for 9 years without the right of reappointment; moreover each judge is obligated to retire at the age of 65 if this age comes before the end of the 9-year period. The President and parliament are required to fill a vacant position within one month and the Congress of judges has three months to do so. But the appointment comes into effect only after oath of the new judge in the parliament; therefore sometimes it is a problem to become a judge of the Constitutional Court if many members of parliament do not want this (for example, they can physically disturb to hold a meeting of the parliament, that is usual in Ukraine). The Chairman of the Court is elected by secret ballot for a single three-year term from and by the members of the Court. Controversies On 29 December 1999 the Court interpreted the Constitution as unconditionally ruling out capital punishment; this is the date when Ukraine de jure abolished capital punishment after a long period of a de facto moratorium. In the 2000s attempts to bribe and blackmail Constitutional Court judges to get a favourable ruling were reported. On 14 November 2001 the Court outlawed the institution of propiska. On 25 December 2003 the Court allowed Leonid Kuchma to run for presidency for the third time; Kuchma chose not to run for re-election. Amidst the 2007 Ukrainian political crisis, on 30 April 2007, on the eve of the Constitutional Court's ruling on the legality of the president's decree dismissing Ukraine's parliament, President Yushchenko, in defiance of the PACE resolution of 19 April intervened in the operation of Ukraine's Constitutional Court by summarily dismissing two Constitutional Court Judges, Syuzanna Stanik and Valeriy Pshenychnyy, for allegations of "oath treason." His move was later overturned by the Constitutional Court and the judges were returned by a temporary restraining order issued by the court. On 16 May, Viktor Yushchenko, for a second time, issued another decree dismissing the two Constitutional Court Judges Syuzanna Stanik and Valeriy Pshenychnyy. On 17 May, the Constitutional Court chairman Ivan Dombrovskyy resigned and was replaced by Valeriy Pshenychnyy. On 23 May, The Constitutional Court of Ukraine acted to prevent the president's undue influence on the court system. The court's ruling was made after Viktor Yushchenko was accused of unduly seeing to influence the court by illegally firing two Constitutional Court judges Valeriy Pshenychnyy