Draft Article 42¹ evidently pursues the aim of ensuring compliance with the lawful requests made by election commissions. Some of the interlocutors met by the delegation of ODIHR and the Venice Commission in Bishkek pointed out that this separate article may be redundant in light of the existing more general sanction for non-compliance or inadequate compliance with a lawful decision, order, resolution or request made by an authorised body (Article 293 of the Code of Infractions). While this may be correct, the presence of a specific sanction may be of deterrent value as far as it does not detract from the principle of legal certainty. It should also be noted that draft Article 42¹ contains a more dissuasive sanction – a 3rd category fine, as opposed to a 2nd category fine in Article 293.⁵

⁵ The Code on Infractions provides for eight categories of fines, with the 1st category being the lightest. These fines are imposed by the competent administrative authority, in this case – election commissions. The fine of 2nd category currently amounts to 3,000 Kyrgyz Som (KGS) for natural persons and KGS 13,000 for legal persons. The 3rd category fine is KGS 5,500 for natural persons and KGS 17,000 for legal persons. 1 Euro is approximately KGS 75.