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At a meeting of the State Duma of November 29, 2000, the Yabloko
faction voted unanimously against an amendment that allows the
heads of Russian Federation subjects to be elected for a third
term.
The deputies of the faction are familiar with the situation in
some
regions,
whose heads would like to be granted a third term. These people
have
virtually subjugated all branches of power to themselves, suppressed
independent mass media and set up their own controls over the
electoral
process, thereby engineering their re-election, irrespective of
actual
voting intentions.
The Administration of the President of Russia demonstrated its
weakness
and
yielded to the pressures of the Presidents of Bashkiria and Tatarstan,
who
announced that they would stand for a third term, irrespective
of any
law.
Federal officials were afraid that they would unable to prevent
this and
would “lose face.” This demonstrates that the new mechanisms
for
regulating
federal relations created in 2000 do not function. Federative
reform has
not
happened and the centre cannot provide effective control over
the
actions of
the regional authorities and has acknowledged its own impotence.
The draft law proposed by the President also contradicts the
logic of
the
Constitutional Court, which counted Boris Yeltsin’s term of office
as
the
Head of State in 1991-1996 as his first presidential term. Therefore
we
can
treat this draft as an attempt to sound out the attitude of the
deputies
to
a possible extension in the term of office of the President of
the RF
by a
third term.
Yabloko would like to point out that this draft only obtained
the
requisite
number of votes for adoption in the State Duma at the third attempt
under
fierce pressure from the Administration of the President. Unfortunately
such
a style of relationships between the Presidential Administration
and
Parliament has become the order of the day.
The draft law and the method of its adoption, as well as the
number of
previous declarations and actions of the top officials give us
grounds
to
draw conclusions about the ongoing onslaught on basic democratic
principles
which has lasted for almost a year. We declare our readiness to
oppose
this
attack with all the legal ways and means at our disposal.
Head of the Yabloko faction
Grigory Yavlinsky
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