The Yabloko faction thinks that the submission of the draft law “On the General Principles of Organisation of Legislative (Representative) and Executive State Authorities in Russian Federation Subjects” by the Presidential Administration to the State Duma represents an attempt to “sound out” the attitude of the deputies to the prospects of allowing the President of the RF to stand for a third term.

According to the Declaration issued by the faction on November 30, the draft law (which grants regional heads the right to be re-elected for a third term) “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.”

It is also stressed in the Declaration that the requisite number of votes for adopting the draft in the State Duma was “obtained only 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 Declaration adds. Yabloko accuses the executive authorities of “the ongoing onslaught on basic democratic principles which has lasted for almost a year”, which the Yabloko deputies are ready to “oppose with all the legal ways and means at their

disposal”.

The Declaration also states that this draft law was lobbied by the Presidential Administration due to its weakness. The heads of the regions 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”. In this situation, according to the Declaration, the

Administration of the President “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.”

According to the Declaration of the faction, 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,” adds the Declaration.

On November 29, at a meeting of the State Duma, the Yabloko faction unanimously voted against the introduction of amendments and addenda to the federal law “On the General Principles of Organisation of Legislative (Representative) and Executive State Authorities in Russian Federation Subjects”. However, the law was adopted; 240 deputies of the Duma voted for the law compared to a requisite minimum of 226 votes, 155 deputies voted against and seven abstained.

Based on Interfax reports.