On December 11th, three days before the nazbols entered the administration’s reception room, Putin signed the law and it came into force. In real fact this law comes down to a constitutional amendment: the heads of the 89 Russian regions directly elected until now are appointed by the Kremlin and only confirmed by the regional parliaments. The independent deputy Vladimir Rizhkov has called the law “extremely disgusting”. He made a parallel with the law that granted extraordinary powers to Hitler in 1933. According to Rizhkov, the new law is “an offense to the electors”.
It is interesting to note that article 83 of the Constitution clearly states the president’s powers and according to the actual constitution the president does not have the right to appoint or remove governors, there are no such powers in article 83. Thus, the law adopted on December 3rd and that came into force on December 11th 2004 contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The law adopted by the State Duma on December 3rd also violates Russia’s federative system. After all in our federative system with 89 federation subjects the population elects the head of the federation subject. The appointment of governors is the prerogative of a unitary State. In all, according to experts, the law about the appointment of governors violates not one but over ten articles of the Constitution.
Naturally, Putin’s group welcomed its new law and adopted it in the State Duma. The deputy head of the president’s administration V. Surkov explained, “the new order of appointing governors will increase the solidity reserve of our political system.” And adapts “the State mechanism to the extreme conditions of an undeclared war.” What he means is of course the fight with terrorism; under the pretext of this “war” they have deftly palmed off an authoritarian law on the confused society, easily violating the Constitution. What concerns the qualification of the law about the appointment of governors as an anti-terrorist law, of course it is a provocative lie. After all terrorism is exported in the Russian regions right from where the heads of administration are presently appointed by the Kremlin. This is the Chechen republic, where first Akhmad Kadirov was “elected” and now the general Alu Alkhanov, a Putin protйgй governs there. This is Ingushetia where Putin, by hook or by crook, by pressuring other candidates, has put the FSB general Murat Zyazikov at the head of the republic.
Finally, I should remind that article 11 of the Constitution states: “The State power in the subjects of the Russian Federation is executed by the bodies of State power they have created.” They, i.e. the subjects, and not president Putin, who thus has broke up with the Constitution.
The same day, on December 3rd 2004 the State Duma did another shameful action: it adopted a law that pursues the reform of the political system in Russia, – according to its authors, but in reality – that definitely destroys politics in Russia. They have adopted the law about increasing the minimal number of party members from 10 to 50 thousand people. According to the new law, in over a half of the RF subjects a political party has to have 500 or more members in its regional departments. In the rest of its regional departments there has to be 250 people and more.
Without any doubt these demands are the excessive demands of a police regime for making it impossible for the RF citizens to realize their constitutional rights, precisely: they violate the rights guaranteed to the RF citizens by part 1 of article 30 of the RF Constitution.
Together with the already existing laws limiting the electoral rights of the citizens, including the law “On political parties”, “The law on public associations”, the law on the complete transfer to a proportional electoral system, when only parties have the right to participate in the elections and also the fixed 7% barrier to pass into the State Duma, Putin’s group has executed the complete destruction of politics in Russia. Such a malicious control of the State over politics does not exist anywhere in the world, in the West or in the East. Nowhere in the world do we find a law that demands that a party has 50 thousand members to be registered. I will give only two examples to illustrate the crude violation of the citizens’ rights. From 104 to 108 millions voters are registered for each election in the RF. 7% percent of this number makes over 8 million voters. And now, by the Kremlin’s will a political party that has received, for example, 7,5 million votes will not be represented in the country’s parliament. 7,5 million citizens will not be represented. But many European countries have a much smaller population! A second example: a voter has lost his deputy. He will not be able anymore to vote for a candidate non-affiliated to a party. He is proposed to vote for a party list, of which he will know three names at best. And the conditions of registering a party were so harshened by the law adopted by the State Duma on December 3rd that the number of political parties who got into the State Duma, already small enough (on the 2003 elections four parties got into the State Duma: United Russia, Rodina, CPRF and LDPR) will decrease to three, two or one on the 2007 elections. Thus, the law adopted on December 3rd 2004 about the minimal number of party members is simply crossing out politics in Russia. It’s over. It does not exist anymore. The national-bolsheviks have felt right: what happened on December 3rd practically removes the electoral rights of Russia’s citizens.
One should realize that during Yeltsin’s era, especially in the last 1996-1999 years, Russian politics were squeezed and swallowed by the State. Thus, for example, the participation or the non-participation of political parties in the elections depended from two State institutions: from the ministry of justice and the central electoral commission. Both institutions were and are the instruments of a gang that took the power and were never neutral; they were always engaged on the side of the party in power. The justice ministry used every trick and device in order to avoid registering a different party. However only the absence of such a registration did not allow the party to participate in the elections to the country’s parliament. A clear example of that is the NBP. The National-Bolshevik Party tried to register (because it has spread nationally and had organizations in 47 RF regions) already in October 1998. However we were denied registration five times since then, on the base of a “moral judgment”, made in 1998 by the justice minister Krashennikov. The judgment was not at all caused by our deeds and actions, but by the suspicions, which the political organization caused by its young members. The suspicions of the parties in power – the owners of the “Justice ministry” company – were best expressed by their representative – an old alcoholic with a red face. After he exhausted his argumentation he finally said: “Well, look at them, there are lots of them, over five thousand, all young; we don’t know what to expect from them”.
The NBP did not manage to get over the bastions of the justice ministry. All these years we lived with the status of the inter-regional public association “National-Bolshevik Party”. From 2001 the FSB tried to take this status away from us. Finally they succeeded. On 06.29.05 Moscow’s district court ruled positively about the liquidation of NBP and its exclusion from the United State Registry of juridical persons. We addressed the Supreme Court. Suddenly the Supreme Court canceled the decision of Moscow’s district court. Surprise! It seemed that justice would finally triumph.
Actually, our joy did not last. The Prosecutor General immediately protested the decision. On October 5th the Supreme Court held a session. I described it in the article “Who are the judges?” in our party’s newspaper. I will cite here most of the article: “The guards in galloons warned the audience to stand up and one after another, eleven judges appeared from the back door, all in black gowns. They sat along a long table. Then they let the press: four TV cameras, many photographers; 20-25 people in all and almost immediately told them to go. The reporting judge started his report. One got the impression that he doesn’t know the material of the case. Lebedev interrupted him several times, telling him to shorten his speech. Then the prosecutor started to criticize the NBP, repeating the old lie: they were not reporting about their activities, did not register the amendments to their code and also mentioned that many Party members were condemned for protests, although this did not figure in the case’s materials. After he finished barking the prosecutor sat down.