The Prosecutor General’s Office will no longer be able to file lawsuits in court to protect the honor and dignity of the head of state without the knowledge and written consent of the president. The day before, Constitutional Chamber made a decision and recognized the rule, based on which the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Kyrgyz Republic could sue on behalf of the president, contrary to the Basic Law. A lawyer Akmat Alagushev informed 24.kg news agency.
According to him, in July, the Constitutional Chamber under the Supreme Court accepted a petition by the representatives of the Media Policy Institute on the verification of constitutionality of Article 4 of the Law on Guarantees of the President of Kyrgyzstan.
«The President is a constitutionally established body, an institute of state power, who, being a subject of public law relations, and not private, cannot have honor and dignity, since these categories belong to the personal non-property rights of the citizens,» said Akmat Alagushev, quoting statement of the Media Policy Institute.
The Basic Law does not establish any special principles for the protection of the president’s reputation.
Akmat Alagushev
In December 2016, the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan was amended regarding the powers of the prosecutor’s office. Thus, the new version of the article 104 describes the powers of the prosecutor’s office in an exhaustive way: the powers not specified in it cannot be exercised.
Article 104 does not include in the powers of the Prosecutor General’s Office the representation of the interests of the President as the head of state, in particular, in matters of protection of honor and dignity.
That is, the constitutional basis for a special instrument to protect the presidential reputation was completely withdrawn from the new Basic Law.
Earlier, being the Prosecutor General, Indira Dzholdubaeva filed a series of multimillion claims for defending the honor and dignity of the then President Almazbek Atambayev against journalists and human rights activists. Media representatives lost all the cases.
