Week's development: A meeting took place in Samara against the abolition of the Mayor's elections; Amendments to the legislation on public and non-commercial organizations; Threats to Viktor Shenderovich and an assault on Ivan Starikov; Sunday rallies in the Lubyanka Square

Week's development: A meeting took place in Samara against the abolition of the Mayor's elections; Amendments to the legislation on public and non-commercial organizations; Threats to Viktor Shenderovich and an assault on Ivan Starikov; Sunday rallies in the Lubyanka Square

Since this April «Demos» Center and «Sova» Information and Analysis Center have been jointly carrying out their «Barometer of Democracy» project. Each Sunday and Monday we approach experts, journalists and public activists with the same request: to name not more than five developments that during the previous week exerted the greatest pressure on the democratic institutions in our country or, on the contrary, strengthened them, and then to evaluate the importance of those developments according to the five-marks scale.

Barometer reading: 25 marks

Week's experts: Valentin Gefter (Institute of Human Rights), Alexandr Daniel (Institute of Civil Analysis), Yuri Dzhibladze (Center for development of democracy and Human Rights), Leonid Nikitinsky («Novaya gazeta»), Sergey Mitrokhin («Yabloko»), Boris Nadezhdin (SPS), Nikolai Petrov (Moscow Carnegie Center), Kirill Rogov («Kommersant»).


WEEK'S DEVELOPMENTS:

A MEETING TOOK PLACE IN SAMARA AGAINST THE ABOLITION OF THE MAYOR'S ELECTIONS

On October 19 the Justice Ministry registered the new statute of the city, under which its mayor will be elected by the city Duma from amomng its deputies, not by the universal vote. A twenty thousand strong meeting took place on October 25 in the center of the city of Samara, with its participants protecting against the new statute.

The Samara City Duma was elected in July, 2004. Its 25 deputies are opponents of the city Mayor Georgy Limansky, while 10 support him. «Bolshevists», that is, the majpruty members enjoy the support of the local big business (groups of «Volgapromgaz», «Soyu», «Volgaburmash»).

On March 31, 2005, the Duma adopted the City Statute, according to which georgy Limansky was deprived of the opportunity to be elected the mayor for another term. On October 19, 2005, the Statute was registered at the RF Ministry of Justice, Main Directorate for the Volga Federal District. Undetr the new Statute the head of the city administration willbe hired to work by a contract and his or her activities will be totally controlled by the Duma.

Chairman of the regional branch of «Rodina» [«Motherland»] party Vladimir Sherstnev believes, that at the registration of the new statute numerous breaches were committed. The Prosecutor's Office protested against six paragraphs of the Statute, but the protest does not suspend its coming into force. Main Directorate of the RF Justice Ministry for the Volga Federal District, on the contrary, concluded that elections of the mayor from among the deputies did not contradict the legislation.

The city head's terms of office expire in July, 2006. Oblast Governor Konstatin Titov has been publicly speaking in favor of the universal elections of the city head.

Limansky himself calls this situation an attack of the oligarchs. «It is necessary first of all to curb the oligarchs who are rushing for power. I think they do not care much about the people's interests», says Georgy Limansky.

Formally the meeting was organized by an initiative group. The deputies claim that the Mayor's Office and its administrative resource stand behind that group.

According to data of Samara edition office of IA REGNUM-VolgaInform, some of the meeting participants were brought there by buses «by means of official orders» - in some organizations, the work of which is paid for from the budget, the employees were told their participation was mandatory and threatened to deprive those who would not come of a part of their salary.

The supporters of the Mayor's elections by universal suffrage included representatives of KPRF [Communist Party of the RF] and «Rodina». The city residents perceived the meeting in differet ways, with opponents of Mayor Limansky also being present in the square.

Experts' comments

Yuri Dzhibladze, Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights: The very fact that the people express their discontent concerning the most relevant issues of preservation of democracy is, of course, very important. The people understand that they are treated like cattle and that those events cannot be narrowly seen as just some showdowns at the top.

Sergey Mitrokhin, «Yabloko»: Despite the fact that the interests of the local authorities, of course, stand behind that, nevertheless, the coming out of such number of people under democratic slogans is a positive phenomenon. We also should strive for that in Moscow - to the restoration of elections of the city mayor.

Boris Nadezhdin, SPS: Of course, the events in Samara are related to the personality of Limansky - that is understandable, as who else could bring twenty thousands into the street - with his confrontation with the other authorities. Nevertheless, twenty thousands came out. People came out into the street in defense of their voting rights - the right to elect the top official in the city.

Nikolai Petrov, Moscow Carnegie Center: The municipal reform in the form it is being carried out now has a whole number of negative features, which already have started showing themselves, and while the reform has not been fully accomplished there is a possibility to understand those signals and to correct something.

One of those features is the renunciation of elections of not only the governors, but the mayors as well. On the one hand, it takes place seemly logically: if the Kremlin appoints the governors, then it would be strange for them to support direct elections of the mayors. Otherwise the mayors would not be directly subordinate to the governors and depend on them, while enjoying the society's support that the governors themselves do not possess. That is, the logic of renunciation of the mayors' elections is based on the renunciation of the governors' elections.

And that creates a whole number of problems related to the departure from democracy - we see that in samara a fairly large number of citizens protest against that. There is also the second problem - a sharp decline in the efficiency of governance. Already in two regional capitals - Syktyvkar and Samara - we have cases of dual authority, situations when, as it happens in business, different groups of city authorities appoint different mayors. One mayor sits in one office, the other one sits in the other office and they have a dispute as to who of them is real and who has to go.

That is a testimony that the schemes proposed are highly ineffective and it is in the interests of not only the society, but the Kremlin (that is related to the possibility for it to retain its power) to hold a serious enough revision of the municipal reform and all those provisions of it that result in those negative phenomena.


AMENDMENTS TO THE LEGISLATION ON PUBLIC AND NON-COMMERCIAL ORGANIZATIONS

On May 12 this year, speaking at «the governmental hour» [of questions and answers] at the State Duma FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev said, that the foreign intelligence services were actively using in their interests the work of the non-governmental organizations, in particular to prepare and make «orange revolutions» in the CIS countries. In his opinion, «foreign special services increasingly actively are using non-traditional methods for their work and with the help of educational programs of various non-governmental organizations advocate in favor of their interests, carry out work and gather information», while «the imperfectness of the legislative base and the state mechanisms of control create conditions to carry out intelligence actions under the guise of charity and other activities», and therefore it was necessary to make the legal regulation of those structures tougher.

Therefore, although the emerged draft law «On Introduction of Amendments to Some legislative Acts of the Russian Federation» формально has been introduced by a group of deputies of «United Russia», it looks like Patrushev's fulfillment of his promises.

In his written assessment of the draft law Lev Levinson, an expert of the Institute of Human Rights and «Obshchestvennaya ekspertiza» [«Public Examination»] Institute, pointed out at numerous violations of the Constitution, which can be found in the proposed amendments.

Experts' comments

Valentin Gefter, Institute of Human Rights: Information has appeared about a draft law very dangerous to the non-commercial organizations, which contains amendments to the legislation on those. It is primarily aimed at foreign participation, but there are many diverse obstacles related to the registration of non-commercial associations and toughening of control over them.

Leonid Nikitinsky, «Novaya gazeta»: This is the desire of the authority to make everybody toe the line, to make everything that moves move only on the state money and only at the state command and to push out the foreigners who dare to finance some things the Kremlin sees as wrong. The daft law is clearly aimed at that.

Boris Nadezhdin, SPS: This is an attempt at a selection of the public organizations. They have already did a good job dealing with the parties and evidently will gnaw «the third sector» to finally do away with it.

Nikolai Petrov, Moscow Carnegie Center: The draft law on public organizations is a very alarming development and it shows how great the distance is between the rhetoric of the President and, to put it for the sake of convenience, the «non-force» part of the Presidential Administration and their real actions. They all tell us about the priorities in the development of the civil society in Russia, creation of the Public Chamber and establishment of the state funds to finance non-commercial organizations (work on that is in full sway as ordered by the President), but in reality the truth is that an independent civil society, a genuine civil society is totally unacceptable for the powers that be - they need a «civil society» under their control, which they will be able to direct to their political ends. But it is not simply that they do not perceive an independent one as a lawful and necessary element of a developed democracy. They see it as a danger and a threat.

It is precisely from that assumption that they undertake that kind of attempts to impose actually an unprecedented control over the public sphere. There was no such thing before and if they adopt that draft law, that will be a most important negative step within the last sphere of public politics that so far remains comparatively independent.

One recalls Nikolai Patrushev's speech in May during the governmental hour in the State Duma, when he claimed exactly that the public organizations, especially those working with the foreigners, and the foreign ones working here are used or serve as a tool to organize revolutions and overthrow the regime. In that connection he promised that amendments would be made to the legislation. It seems the promise has come true. Although the draft law has been proposed by deputies from «United Russia», it is understandable that at present no initiative come independently from the Duma, all of them being prepared in the Presidential Administration.

Thus, the difference, on which some naive colleagues have been laying their hopes, arguing that, you see, there is the force wing there and there is, let us say, the liberal wing personified by Surkov, has lost any meaning. The words are as they are, but in practice absolutely simulation and imitating structures are being created, while a toughest control is being imposed over the really existing independent organizations.

There are many bad aspects in that draft law, but two things are very dangerous: first, the registration bodies (those are a part of the Justice Ministry) will be allowed at any moment to request and obtain any financial documents of an organization. That concerns not only the public organizations, but all commercial ones, which in terms of the registration, accounting and control get the same status that the public ones have. Even the tax inspectorates today get only quarterly and annual accounts, but now those will be entitled to request any financial documents at any moment. Of course, this is unbelievable.

And secondly: the deadline for all existing non-commercial organizations to be re-registered is to be limited to one year. Let us recall the sad results of the re-registration of the public organizations only that took place in 1999, when, according to various data, up to 35 thousand of those were eliminated precisely because they failed to re-register themselves before the deadline (because it is physically impossible to do within one year). But the number of all other forms of non-commercial organizations is much bigger. There are many organizations that are simply not sophisticated enough in those matters: they will have to re-write their charters and some of then will rush for the re-registration in the last weeks, as it always happens. That was the case in 1999: the justice bodies would return the documents without any comments, claming they were not in conformity to the norms, more often than not giving no assistance to ensure correct registration of the documents, and many thousands of organizations were eliminated as a result.


THREATS TO VIKTOR SHENDEROVICH AND AN ASSAULT ON IVAN STARIKOV

The election commission of the 201st constituency district of the city of Moscow registered satiric writer Viktor Shenderovich a candidate for the additional elections to the State Duma. He was nominated for the 201st district-of Moscow by the United Civil Front. Viktor Shenderovich is a member of the council of Committee «2008: Free Choice» headed by Garri Kasparov.

On October 25 Shenderovich received his candidate identity document. But one day before that «Ezhednevny jurnal» published «Viktor Shederovich's Statement», which the author asked to be considered as his application to the law-enforcing bodies.

Shederovich reported that on October 20 he had a talk with Alexandr Levin, producer of Gleb Pavlovsky's TV program «Realnaya Politika» [«Real Politics»]:

…Levin explained:

- that some unnamed officials of the Presidential Administration had been tolerating and were ready to tolerate me [Shenderovich] further as a journalist, but they believed that politics were «their field», which emphatically «should not be entered without their permission»;

- that if I decided to go into politics, I must get into contact with those people and start «making agreements as all people do»;

- that his [Levin's] talking partners' attitude to me was not bad, but they would see my further actions outside of those agreements as «breaching the rules of the game», entailing actions in response. …A possible car accident with my wife's involvement was mentioned as an example.

Editor-in-Chief of «Ezhednevny jurnal» Alexandr Ryklin invited the rivals of Shederovich at the elections (first of all, Stanislav Govorukhin, the candidate from «United Russia») to express their attitude to the situation. Govorukhin expressed it: «What nonsense! I assure you nobody in the Presidential Administration needs Shenderovich. It is a typical black PR [propaganda]». Govorukhin did not explain how comes that he knew the attitudes in the Administration.

Levin himself denied the contents of the chat and called Shederovich's statement «a cynical use of a private conversations for the purpose of self-PR [self-advertisement]». From the Kremlin it was aid, that is was «the humorist's yet another joke». And TV talk show host Vladimir Solovyov suggested for the authority to detach security guards for Shenderovich in order for him not to be killed by the oligarchs whom he served and not to be made a Gongadze of Russia.

The participants of «real politics» joke instead of replying and make surprised faces against the background of constantly coming reports about assaults on their political opponents starting with young people of NBP and AKM (see, for example, about the beating of activists of left youth organizations on August 29 this year) and ending with Ivan Starikov of SPS.

The assault on Secretary of the Federal Political Council of «Union of the Right Forces» Ivan Starikov was committed in the evening of October 27 near the entrance to his house. Two unknown persons severely beat him and disappeared, without taking either his car-keys or money of mobile telephone. Starikov himself supposes, that «most probably that proceeds from a product under the name of “Nashi”. The homunculus nurtured by the Kremlin starts living its own life».

The same story occurred on October 24 in Syktyvkar: there inside the entrance of the house he lives in deputy and journalist Nikolai Moiseyev, Chairman of the «Yabloko» branch in the republic was beaten. Two unknown persons demanded neither money nor jewels, but were just methodically beating the deputy.

Experts' comments

Alexandr Daniel, Institute of Civil Analysis: The fact that they began threatening Shenderovich is, on the one hand, unconditionally bad, but, on the other hand, that means they are afraid. Maybe they are afraid for nothing, maybe few people will vote for him, but they, let's say for the sake of convenience, Pavlovsky and Surkov, think differently. Or is it possible that they have reasons to be afraid we do not know about? Therefore I would assess this development as positive - it is always a pleasure when various scoundrels start to be afraid.

Valentin Gefter, Institute of Human Rights: In Cheryomushki constituency district for elections to the Moscow City Duma three candidates were given wrong address for placing their deposits and therefore they were not registered. All these things together - Shenderovich and partly Starikov - show the growth of dirty technologies in a seemly normal Moscow pre-election situation. These are features that show that the authority is afraid even of the established practice of normal elections even with all present-day legislative «peculiarities». They show that the December elections - both to the State Duma in the University district and to the City Duma have a chance to proceed with a great number of various abuses on the part of the authority using its administrative resource and various other tricks. Each time some specific body to do that is found, for example, this Cheryomushki commission, but the fact is indicative: even the administrative methods comparatively usual for the authority is not good for them and the intensity of the dirt use goes on.


SUNDAY MEETINGS IN THE LUBYANKA SQUARE

On October 30, the Day of the Memory of the Victims of Political Repression the annual mass event near the Solovetsky Stone in the Lubyanka Square in Moscow took place organized by the Union of the Victims of Political Repression («Moscow MemorialМосковский мемориал») and the association of the Victims of Political Repression, in which about 1000 people participated.

In the evening at the same place a joint action of the opposition movements and organizations of Russia took place - «Marsh nesoglasnykh» [«The March of Those Who Disagree». It was organized by the United Civil Front, Movement «For Human Rights», NBP, «Our Choice» party, youth movements «We» and «Defense», as well as several other organizations. As different from the previous event, the meeting attended by about 300 people heard urgent political slogans: «Stop to the Chechen War!», «No to Political Repression!», «Stop Lying!», «Russian without Putin!», «Put the President on Trial», «Down with the Power of Chekists» [historically the first name of the Soviet secret police].

Experts' comments

Kirill Rogov, «Kommersant»: The meetings took place and they have become positive developments: it is a kind of political life; the fact that it exists and can get people togethre is good. There were two meetings yesterday: the morning meeting was dedicated to the memory of the victims of political repression and the evening one was devoted to the contemporary political repression. Those are interrelated problems, but it seems to some degree even reasonable to me to divide them. because it is one thing for us to talk about the people who dies and to pay our homage to them and it is another thing for us to hold a political action concerning today, totally not concerning the memory of the victims of political repression. People who came with political posters to the morning meeting had been asked not to come there. To me that does not seem unreasonable.

Valentin Gefter, Institute of Human Rights: Sunday meetings in Lubyanka (and others as well) show that the level of emotional tension and the number of participants are not big each time, but the degree of the criticism of the regime grows. It seems to me that a gradual radicalization of protest takes place. The authorities' task - to push the discontented away from politics - has reached such extreme that those people will grow more and more bitter and, accordingly, the authorities' reaction to their bitterness might also become rather extreme. I asses that as negative, because the lack of ability to work with the discontented is demonstrated by the authority in extreme forms of opponent actions ranging from ban-imposing draft laws to physical threats to manipulations at the elections to the Moscow City Duma. That shows that the authority cannot and does not wish to reach any compromises even in the areas where it is obliged to do that and to observe the norms of the law. But it always chooses the toughest options of confrontation.

In small matters each such development does not change much radically, but in aggregate they increasing assemble in such mosaics.