DUSHANBE, April 19, Asia-Plus — A court case pitting the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) against the Social-Democratic Party (SDPT) will begin tomorrow.
The MoJ has applied to the Supreme Court asking to suspend activity of the party for not satisfying requirements of the law on political parties.
Davlat Sulaymonov, the head of the MoJ department for registration of public associations and political parties, said in an interview with Asia-Plus that SDPT had broken several articles of the country’s law “On Political Parties.”
According to him, the party, in particular, has not reported on its intention to extend its activity and its financing sources. “The party has also not published and submitted to the ministry its financial report,” Sulaymonov said, adding that they officially applied to the party’s leadership asking to submit the report on March 15 already. “We did not receive reply from them in the term determined by law (10 day) and therefore applied to the Supreme Court on April 4,” the MoJ official said.
He added that the preliminary meeting of judge with representatives of the ministry and party will be held on Friday, April 20.
In the meantime, the deputy SDPT leader, Shokirjon Hakimov, told journalists that the ministry’s claim is absolutely “unfounded” and does not correspondent to the facts. “We submitted all required documents to the ministry long ago, and the financial report of the party was published in the Dushanbe weekly
Asia-Plus
,” Hakimov said.
“I assess this action of the ministry as pressure on our party,” said Hakimov, “I think this move is connected with our critical position on the presidential election that was held on November, 2006.”
We will recall that the SDPT and the Democratic Party boycotted the presidential election, calling it illegitimate.
