“For” and “against”: do we need administrative responsibility for insults and slander on the Internet

Deputies of the Supreme Council considered more than 20 issues at the plenary session today. Several legislations were withdrawn, moved to the next plenary session or rejected by the Supreme Council. A sufficient number of votes during the voting did not gain legislative initiatives related to amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.

The authors of two initiatives were the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Legislation Grigory Dyachenko and the City Council of People's Deputies of Bendery. The legislations contained amendments to Articles 5.61 and 5.62 “Insult” and “Slander” of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.

The purpose of the legislations is to establish administrative liability for insult and slander committed publicly using information and telecommunication networks, including the global Internet.

The opinions of the deputies of the Supreme Council were divided. Positions "for" and "against" were expressed. Parliamentarian Andrei Safonov recalled that the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic already provides for administrative liability for public insult and slander, which entails the imposition of fines.

The Speaker of the Parliament proposed to support the law-in-draft of the City Council of Bendery that introduces punishment for slander on the Internet. Moreover, liability for libel is established in the legislation of Russia. Within the framework of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation – for legal entities, and in the Criminal Code – for individuals.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs considers that in practice it will be impossible to establish the object of the offense and therefore in the absence of a mandatory element of the offense, it seems impossible to adopt the law-in-draft.

The legislations “On making additions to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the PMR” did not get enough votes of deputies and were rejected as a whole.