"They are trying to rock the boat ... instead of working on the consolidation of power and mobilizing citizens so that we can resolve real problems," said parliament speaker Boris Gryzlov, of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

"I view this sort of behavior in categorically negative terms. It will lead to nothing good -- this is simply a waste of time for the opposition."

United Russia won a two-thirds majority in December parliamentary elections on the single platform of unbound loyalty to President Vladimir Putin -- whose approval ratings at the time stood at around 80 percent.

The liberals received almost no coverage in the state-controlled media that now dominates Russia and won only a few seats in the chamber as a result.

Most bills are passed without debate and the opposition often does not bother to show up at the chamber.

They have since filed a series of losing appeals with the central election commission over how the election was staged.

Moscow received a stern warning over the fate of democratic freedoms during a visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In a dramatic gesture that the opposition itself admitted was a futile exercise, a small group of rebel former and current legislators hauled 14 boxes of documents into the Supreme Court on Monday to prove the election was not fairly staged.

The complaint was filed by the liberal Yabloko party -- ousted from the lower house during December's vote for the first time in post-Soviet history -- the Communist Party, which once dominated the chamber and today controls barely 11 percent of its votes, and several members of the "2008: Free Elections" group.

Irina Khakamada, one of Russia's most well-recognized liberals, said the action was staged primarily to show that the opposition was not giving up under Putin's dominant regime.

See also:

State Duma elections 2003

AFP, September 28, 2004