She's checking everyone

While the People's Freedom Party “For Russia without arbitrariness and corruption” (PARNAS), formed by Mikhail Kasyanov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Milov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, is awaiting a response from the Ministry of Justice to a request for registration, Ministry of Justice employees are calling members of regional branches of the party and forcing them to write explanatory notes about this why they decided to join there. Kommersant writes about this, citing the secretary of the party’s federal political council, Konstantin Merzlikin.

Party members in the Ulyanovsk branch were summoned to the regional branch of the Ministry of Justice and asked how many people were at the founding meeting and where and when it took place. The party claims that the actions of ministry employees are unconstitutional. Meanwhile, representatives of the Ministry of Justice “were present at the founding meeting, and there were no complaints against us,” the newspaper quotes Irina Klimova, a member of the regional political council of PARNAS.

In the Orenburg regional department of the Ministry of Justice (another region where the party was checked in this way), the newspaper was told that there was nothing unconstitutional in such actions: they say, in order to establish the reliability of the information in the documents submitted for registration, it is necessary to selectively call members of the department. At the same time, the head of the local department, Elena Arnok, claims that many of those interviewed heard about PARNAS for the first time.

In Dagestan, inspections were carried out not even by the Ministry of Justice, but by officials of the regional government.