Earlier this month, Kyrgyz Facebook user Kamchybek Tashiyev took to his account and posted a crudely worded, two-line status update.
“No to ‘matronymics,” whoever backed them should cancel [their decision]! That is my civic position!” he wrote without elaborating further.
Tashiyev is no ordinary citizen, though. He is the head of the State Committee for National Security, the successor agency to the KGB.
The decision he was referring to was a June 30 ruling by the Constitutional Court to allow citizens to be permitted, once they reach the age of 18, to adopt their mother’s name to form a matronymic. The custom now is the one originally adopted from Russia, wherein children are given a patronymic – the name of their father – as a second name.
In the instance of the litigant who first brought this case to the courts, Altyn Kapalova, her children would one day get to use Altynovna or Altynovich as their second names.
The Constitutional Court ruling was greeted as a victory in the battle against patriarchal norms in Kyrgyzstan, but the celebrations now look premature.
In a move that stands not only to reverse the matronymic breakthrough but also to undermine the independence of the judiciary, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov on July 17 proposed passing legislation to comply with Tashiyev’s wishes.
The specific provision of the draft bill suggested by Japarov is to allow the president to overrule Constitutional Court rulings whenever they are deemed to go against the “moral and ethical values and public consciousness of the people of the Kyrgyz Republic.”
Source : Eurasia