Kyrgyz parliament seeks to sue all former presidents except Atambayev

The Parliament of Kyrgyzstan has charged two profile committees to draft a law to bring liable the citizens having a status of former presidents. Remarks came from Iskhak Masaliyev, MP representing Onuguu-Progress Party. “Atambayev’s name is not mentioned there. What they seek is to bring responsible former presidents if they commit crimes. We need to draft such a law now,” he said.

The parliamentarian said he is ready to initiate the process and submit the necessary draft law to the parliament in a week. “We have appeared in a situation when the president, parliamentarians can be brought liable, whereas former presidents cannot be,” he said.

A day earlier, MP Dastan Bekeshev representing SDPK Party left a post on Facebook saying voting procedures were not observed when speaker set proposals of parliamentarians to voting without specifying them. “Usually, the speaker reads out proposals of parliamentarians for records and sets them to voting. He did so, for instance, in February 2018 when we heard information on reasons of accident at TPP. We voted for every proposal read out. Today, he acted differently. I think, it was done on purpose,” Bekeshev wrote.

Bekeshev believes that the parliament passed Masaliyev’s proposal to charge committees to draft a law lifting immunity of ex-president Almazbek Atambayev and developing mechanisms to lift immunity of former presidents. “This is an instruction – a trial balloon: will that draft law be passed? Anyway, draft laws are initiated by parliamentarians, not committees,” he wrote.