Article 12- Any resident Malagasy has the right to leave the national territory and to
return to it within the conditions established by the law.
All individuals have the right to circulate and to establish themselves freely on all the
territory of the Republic within respect for the rights of others and the prescriptions of the
law.
Article 13- Any individual is assured of the inviolability of their person, their domicile and
of the secrecy of their correspondence.
No search may take place except by virtue of the law and on written order of the
competent judicial authority, except in the case of flagrante delicto.
No one may be punished except by virtue of a law promulgated and published prior to
the commission of the punishable act.
No one may be punished twice for the same act.
The law assures to all the right that justice will be rendered, and that insufficiency of
resources will not be an obstacle.
The State guarantees the plenitude and the inviolability of the rights to defense before
all the jurisdictions and at all the stages of the procedure, including that of the
preliminary investigation, and at the level of the judicial police or of prosecution.
All moral pressure and/or all physical brutality to apprehend a person or to keep them in
detention is prohibited.
All defendants or accused have the right to the presumption of innocence until their guilt
has been established by a decision of justice becoming definitive.
Preventive detention is an exception.
Article 14- Any person has the right to freely constitute associations, under reserve of
conforming themselves to the law.
This same right is recognized for the creation of political parties. The conditions of their
creation are determined by a law on political parties and their financing.
The associations and the political parties that jeopardize the unity of the Nation and the
republican principles, and that advocate totalitarianism or segregation of ethnic, tribal or
religious character, are prohibited.
The parties and political organizations participate in the expression of the suffrage.
The Constitution guarantees the right of democratic opposition.
After each legislative election, the political groups of the opposition appoint a head of the
opposition. In default of agreement, the head of the political group of the opposition
having obtained the greatest number of the suffrage expressed at the moment of the
vote is considered as the official head of the opposition.
The status of the opposition and of the parties of the opposition, recognized by this
Constitution and giving them notably an institutional framework to express themselves,
is determined by the law.
Article 15- Any citizen has the right to be a candidate to the elections specified by this
Constitution, under reserve of the conditions established by the law.
Article 16- In the exercise of the rights and freedoms recognized by this Constitution, all
individuals are held to the duty of respect for the Constitution, the institutions, the laws
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