Muscovites, learn to walk

TOWARDS ELECTIONS

Elections to the Moscow City Duma, which will be held in the capital on December 4, everyone called the dress rehearsal of the federal parliamentary elections. This campaign is brilliantly finished. Few people doubt the results of the vote. Another important thing is...

Elections to the Moscow City Duma, which will be held in the capital on December 4, everyone called the dress rehearsal of the federal parliamentary elections. This campaign is brilliantly finished. Few people doubt the results of the vote. Another thing is important: what did you rehearse? Novaya decided to set the accents even before the ballot boxes were opened at the polling stations.

Will Yury Luzhkov, the leader of the list of the party in power, join the number of new deputies or will he remain working as the mayor of Moscow?

The answer is obvious: after December 4, 2005, the capital's mayor is not going to become any speaker of the Moscow City Duma, as well as a couple of prefects who headed the district parts of the United Russia party list as their "locomotives". But, as the chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation (part-time - the main "bear" of the country) Boris Gryzlov put it, "the train will leave, but the platforms will remain." Seats in the municipal parliament will be firmly staked out, including with the help of a very specific administrative resource, for agents of influence of the authorities on the policy of legislators. At Petrovka, no less obedient machine will be created for voting on the projects needed by EdRu than it has been working on Okhotny Ryad for two years now. Nominally a two-party (less than two factions cannot be under the law) Moscow City Duma with the only dominant in the person of the party in power will rather be one and a half powerful. Pulling over the passing score of the "second force" does not promise her (this force) any intelligible representation. A maximum of three mandates out of 35. The main “locomotive” itself can be driven into the depot at any time, suggesting anyone else for approval by the deputies. Moreover, without any guarantees for the dismissed mayor to become, if he so desires, at least a member of parliament on a list from the ruling party.

Will the killer parties used against Rodina and United Democrats get into the Moscow City Duma?

By no means. Neither the LDPR of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose lawsuit against Motherland was accepted and satisfied by the Moscow City Court, nor Free Russia, which opposed YABLOKO-United Democrats, judging by the ratings in Moscow, have a chance of independent representation in the municipal parliament. Their goal is to warm up before the federal elections, where you need not to miss the "good old" brands. How? Very simple: dropping their hands to the protest electorate, which is not too willing to go to the polling stations, and the party of Dmitry Rogozin, and the party of Grigory Yavlinsky, and the Union of Right Forces of Nikita Belykh. Labels of defeatists are, perhaps, the only thing that can stick the Kremlin's PR to the obstinate political subjects that it does not control without the risk of being convicted of a handwritten "order".

Why was the claim of the Liberal Democratic Party against the Motherland, and not vice versa, satisfied, although the slogans of both smell equally bad?

The version, which is excusable for the fathers of the city, says: it was not customary for anyone to continue inciting ethnic hatred in the elections. In fact, the loyalty of the Liberal Democratic Party to any party in power in parliament and the ability to negotiate when lobbying for the necessary bills, confirmed by a 12-year history and which became completely obvious in this campaign, needed a public gesture of approval on the eve of the vote. But since both Rodina and the Liberal Democratic Party hit the point of public expectations, the really existing moods had to be somehow channeled into a safe and controlled channel from above. That is, in the Liberal Democratic Party. Not all cool-looking men will stay at home on election day, will they? We need to offer them an option to vote ...

For the first time, courts of different instances acted as arbitrators in elections. Is the third branch of power equal in strength to the executive and legislative?

Simply put, it usurped the right of the people to elect their own power. "All to court!" - sounds no more convincing than the exchange of lines from the Soviet comedy: "Everyone in the garden!" “Will you sing there?” “No, you will listen there.” And justice in Moscow does not cease to be “basman” in its image just because the city court is registered at a different address, and the Supreme Court will speak out tomorrow or even today - this will be a direct interference in the balance of power in the elections. Let us note that the intervention, which is deliberately distanced from the voters' own will, is from the "eat what they give" series. Selective justice here differs from the electoral process in the same way as going to a Soviet store from a Soviet coupon to a special distributor. Even Muscovites should remember the difference.

Does the toughening of the electoral legislation in Moscow, in comparison with the federal one, bring closer or further the real multi-party system?

A two-party system - yes, brings it closer, a real multi-party system - on the contrary, sharply moves it away. The difference between the one and a half party system described above in the Moscow State Duma and political pluralism is like between democratic centralism from the statutes of the CPSU and the Komsomol and real democracy. Either the subordination of the minority to the majority, or the guarantee of the rights of the minority and the consideration of its opinion by the ruling class. There is no third. The 20% turnout threshold is beneficial, among other things, to the traditional left-wing electorate and the party in power. Only the worse the turnout for the elections, the better. At the same time, the will of 4/5 of the population, which has been apolitical in recent years, automatically remains outside the brackets. The abolition of the column "against all" blocks the manifestation of disloyalty to the authorities in secret voting booths closed from outsiders' eyes. And the 10% barrier for parties (in neighboring Ukraine it was lowered from 4% to 3% under the Orange regime) strikes out from the representative body of the capital everyone who has less than a million sympathizers.

Who benefits from a system that has just been publicly tested before our very eyes? To the Mayor of Moscow, whose list will betray him at the very first turn of the Kremlin, or to the Muscovites, whose four times proven right to elect the city's fathers they want to give either to the courts or to their sponsors? It's scary to say that we, as voters, are defiantly denied confidence. We are called to come to the polls, but in such a way that decent people stay at home, not wanting to wallow in political mud.

Let's disappoint them. Let's go to the polling station, vote as we see fit, and when we get home, we'll take a shower. As after dirty, unpleasant, but necessary work.

AND AT THIS TIME

Zhirinovsky prepared envelopes for the elections

Closer to the elections, the most daring campaign moves began to be used. This week, some Muscovites received large envelopes. They contain an offer to join the LDPR party and a newspaper campaigning for deputies to the Moscow City Duma from the same LDPR. And everything would be fine, if not for one "but". On the envelope is stamped: "Governmental". Where there is usually a picture with heroes-polar explorers or heroes-cosmonauts, there is a photograph of Zhirinovsky, next to it there is an inscription: deputy of the State Duma, the return address is parliament.

It remains to be recalled that the electoral law prohibits persons in the civil service from using the advantages of their official position during the campaign.

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