Press Release, 24.01.2020

The Public Constitutional Council has begun work on an alternative package of amendments to the Constitution. This was announced at a briefing in Moscow by its founders – Yegeny Gontmakher, Leonid Nikitinsky, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Grigory Yavlinsky. The Public Advisory Council, which will include Tamara Morshchakova and Mikhail Krasnov, authors of the Constitution, will help the Public Council in this. When the work on the amendments is completed, they will be sent to the President and to the State Duma. The Council will seek their consideration by popular vote, which is expected to take place in April. The main goal of the amendments is to offer the public an alternative, the founders of the Council say.

Opening the briefing, Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee, who initiated the development of alternative amendments to the Constitution, said that the President’s proposals “would lead to further strengthening of the authoritarian regime, usurp power in the hands of one person”. He also noted that “from the constitutional point of view, many of the amendments contradict the first and second chapters” of the Basic Law, the procedure for amending the Constitution does not comply with the Constitution.

Yavlinsky said that the most serious among Putin’s amendments, was the creation of a new body of state power – the State Council, – not provided for by the foundations of the constitutional system, as well as the norms related to the dismissal of judges, discrimination of the State Duma in the formation of the government, and norms indirectly related to the accession of other states to Russia. “It is likely that a constitutional law will be adopted on the accession of other states in order to search for new candidates for the presidency of Russia, as if we were missing our own,” Yavlinsky explained.

Yavlinsky called the upcoming “popular vote” a “plebiscite”. According to Yavlinsky, such kind of plebiscites “are characteristic of societies that are transitioning to a totalitarian phase, or already totalitarian”.

According to Grigory Yavlinsky, the society must prepare different amendments, for this Yabloko initiated the creation of the Public Constitutional Council, where neither the Yabloko party nor other political forces will dominate.

Yavlinsky also announced that leading experts in the field of constitutional law agreed to join the Public Advisory Council under the Public Council, such as Tamara Morshchakova, an ex judge of the Constitutional Court, and Mikhail Krasnov, head of the constitutional law department of the Higher School of Economics.

Yabloko, in turn, will introduce a “preliminary package” to the experts, which will include, in particular, amendments related to limiting the term of the presidential term to four years, election of the Federation Council, elimination of “filters” in gubernatorial and mayoral elections, and increase in the number of the State Duma mandates to 650 (from the present 450) and restrictions on being an MP to three convocations, independence of the Central Electoral Commission, and additional guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Economist Yevgeny Gontmakher noted in his speech that he belonged to the non-partisan community and became member of the Public Council as an expert. He said that the Council would elabourate the amendments that would lead to decentralisation of power, independence of local self-government, separation of powers, consolidation of social guarantees, and diminishing the role of the President.

“We were offered a semi-finished product developed from a scratch. Even what has been presented as legal language does not stand up to criticism. This is unacceptable for the Constitution,” the expert noted. He cited as an example one of the amendments on the indexation of social benefits. According to Yevgeny Gontmakher such an amendment would be pointless, at least because it was not indicated how often and to what extent it would be carried out. In general, the provisions on indexation already exist in the legislation, so new amendments are redundant. Gontmakher also noted that the living standards is an outdated term that Boris Yeltsin introduced in the crisis of 1992. The expert compared the situation with amending the Constitution with the pension reform, which was also done in a hurry.

With this attitude to the Constitution but, in fact, to society, the government lays a mine of instability, conflict and incomprehensible fate of the country, Yevgeny Gontmakher said. “No one understands what will happen after this transit. These amendments make absolutely everything obscure. This is a movement towards tightening of the policies and isolation from the world. Putin is starting a very risky journey.”

On the contrary, the Public Constitutional Council offers a civilised way, when the society independently decides how it wants to live, Yevgeny Gontmakher emphasised.

Politician Vladimir Ryzhkov said that Vladimir Putin’s amendments represented his desire to legitimise the practices that have developed over the past 20 years in the Constitution, for example, the right not to implement the decisions of the European Court for Human Rights, the President’s right to crush the judiciary, the right to create some kind of unconstitutional quasi-power bodies. All this can be called a “deterioration of the Constitution,” he noted.

Vladimir Ryzhkov promised that the Public Constitutional Council would prepare amendments within a reasonable time, which, unlike the President’s amendments, will improve the Constitution in those parts that, as it became clear in 27 years, did not work. Amendments of the Council would not touch the foundations of the constitutional order (Chapters 1 and 2 of the Constitution) and will give additional guarantees where the Constitution was “perverted and spoilt”.

He innumerated five areas of work: first, additional guarantees of freedom of speech, second, independence of the judiciary, “now crushed by the executive branch”, third, independence of the “crushed” local self-government, fourth, free elections, and fifth, separation of powers.

Leonid Nikitinsky, journalist and member of the editorial board of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Candidate of Juridical Sciences, said in his speech that the Public Constitutional Council would continue the discourse, which “the President started, but quickly finished off.” “We will conduct it in a legal language, we will discuss the fate of the country and its prospects in a language close to legal,” Nikitinsky said. According to him, this can be “long and useful,” and even if Putin’s amendments are adopted, the work of the Public Council will come in handy when the power changes. He also assured that Novaya Gazeta would become a platform for this discourse.

Leonid Nikitinsky proposed that the work of the Council should concentrate on the position of the judiciary and strengthen guarantees for its independence, starting with the Constitutional Court. “If the Constitutional Court acted, there would be no problems like today,” Nikitinsky said.

Answering journalists’ questions, Grigory Yavlinsky said that after an alternative draft of the amendments is prepared, they should be submitted through the Yabloko factions in the regional legislative assemblies to the State Duma, and also separately submitted to the President.

“We will insist that they be included as an alternative project in the all-Russian vote. After all, if it [the vote] does take place, there must be some choice to choose from, otherwise it can hardly be called a vote,” Yavlinsky said. The main goal of the discussion around the Constitution should be to convey ideas to society, the leader of Yabloko noted. “The main thing is that they are known to the nation. Politics works only when there is an alternative,” he stressed.

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov in his turn added that the party’s website was opened for collection of proposals for amendments that can be submitted by any citizen. In addition, at the initiative of Yabloko regional branches, the process of forming Public Constitutional Councils began in the Russian regions too.