Short

Let the prisoners go

On March 15, in Novokuybyshevsk, at a meeting of the members of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society Institutes with Dmitry Medvedev, the head of state was transferred to the expert opinion “On the legal sense of the Institute of Cleaning”, signed by ten doctors of legal sciences. The main thing, referring to documents and decisions of senior courts, experts in the field of law say: for pardon, the petition of the convict himself is not required. In addition, the confession of guilt to the convicts submitting a petition for pardon is not provided for in any law. According to experts, the right to mercy or not is “exclusively in the competence of the president, and it is not connected by the legislative framework and has the right to take or not take into account any circumstances: the nature of the crime, the identity of the convict, the opinion of the public”. An expert opinion will be discussed with the president at the last meeting with human rights activists in April. About a month ago, the members of the Council already offered Medvedev to have mercy on 34 convicts, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

A crafty figure
44% of Russians, the State Sociological Service of the VTsIOM reports, are sure that the results of the presidential election are reliable and correspond to the will of voters. This point of view is primarily adhere to those who themselves voted for Putin. Another 34% believe that “there could be minor fraud that did not affect the results of the vote”, that is, the voices were stolen, and how much - God knows him. 14% believe that the results should not be trusted. It is curious that in 2004 and 2008, the percentage of those who, according to state socialists, trusted the results of the “wizard of Churov”, was higher - 53%, and this figure is the same for the second presidential election of Putin and the first Medvedev. Which, from the point of view of sociology, is almost unbelievable. And one more interesting detail: if in April 2004 the Putin approval index, according to Levada Center sociologists, was 60 points, four years later, 50 years, then on the eve of the current elections it amounted to only 31 points. In other words, a negative trend in relation to the elected president is stable and consistent. But this did not stop him from winning the first round.

"White" billionaires became larger

416 citizens of Russia declared income in exceeding 1 billion rubles ($ 33 million) in 2011. Such data are contained in the March report of the Federal Tax Service. Over the year, the number of ruble billionaires increased by 31 people. But super-bog-bogged (whose income exceeds 10 billion rubles-$ 333 million) has become less: if there were 67 people in the pre-crisis in 2008, 29 in 2010, now-27. True, it should be borne in mind that only “white” income takes into account. According to the recently published Forbes rating, which in its assessments takes into account not only income, but also the assets of the richest people of the planet, 78 dollar billionaires live in Russia.

EU: "In favor of one candidate"
The European parliament in its resolution of March 15 condemned shortcomings and violations during the preparation and holding of the presidential elections in Russia on March 4: “The parliament regrets that the choice of voters was limited during the recent elections, and requires a comprehensive analysis of all violations,” the resolution says. EU also noted that, according to observers from the OSCE and the Council of Europe, the presidential elections in Russia “were seriously distorted in favor of one candidate due to deficiencies in the rules of registration, unequal coverage in the media and the use of state resources in favor of one candidate.” Neither the current president, nor the elected in any way to the statement of European parliamentarians reacted. The head of the CEC also said nothing. Only Alexei Pushkov reacted, the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, who called this resolution “hostile”: “In the resolution, the intention to impose his will obviously in the resolution,” he said.

Shock and mourning

March 16 was the day of national mourning in Belgium. At exactly 11 a.m., all the Belgians, wherever they were (taken at the Central Station in Brussels), froze in a minute of silence to honor the memory of the terrible accident of the bus in the Swiss tunnel. She took the lives of 22 children aged 11-12 years.