Translated material
And there is no trial
Judge Olga Borovkova became the “main enemy of all humanity” for the opposition this week. Those indignant against the latest imprisonment of left-wing activist Sergei Udaltsov launched an entire campaign against the judge. However, for real change, such pressure must become a constant background to the work of the authorities.
The leader of the Left Front movement, Sergei Udaltsov, temporarily became the face of the opposition protest. He was once again imprisoned, without yet being released from prison, for ten days. The appeal was supposed to be considered the day before, but was postponed to January 7, so the activist must spend the New Year away from home.
And the antagonist of Udaltsov to the city and the world was Magistrate Olga Borovkova. Borovkova also became a kind of symbol of protest. The case was taken so seriously that the judge was even provided with security, fearing for her health.
The judge is young - she is not yet 30. She was apparently born (there was even a separate discussion about this online) in November 1983. Age in this case is an important factor, since an assistant judge, a position Borovkova seems to have held since the fall of 2004, requires a higher education. And the young lawyer then had to be at most 20 years old. In addition, this is a civil servant position and requires at least two years of civil service experience or four years of legal experience.
If all this is true, then it is generally incomprehensible how Borovkova could become a judge and judge someone - she simply should not have the right according to the law. The law, of course, is the drawbar, but still up to a certain limit.
However, network users who are indignant against Udaltsov’s arrest are wrong to blame the judge for everything.
Non-systemic oppositionists have not liked her since last year, when she arrested Boris Nemtsov on New Year’s Eve and he spent the entire New Year holidays in prison. However, she periodically made verdicts that were quite favorable for the oppositionists. In July 2010, for example, she acquitted the adviser to the chairman of Yabloko, Artur Grokhovsky, although the police demanded that he be convicted. In January 2011, she also acquitted the main defender of the Khimki Forest, Evgenia Chirikova, in the case of organizing an unapproved action near the government building of the Moscow Region.
Sergei Udaltsov himself, it seems, is in no hurry to turn the judge into universal evil. In an interview with Izvestia, he stated that he considers Borovkova a victim of the system. “I have no doubt that she sees perfectly well what is going on, but for some reason she continues to serve this system,” he said.
However, social activists are practically demanding the blood of the young judge and write online, triumphantly, that on the website of the Moscow City Court it is written that Borovkova’s site is free. They see this as a great victory for the public over a system that is unfair to its opponents.
In fact, neither the removal of Borovkova, nor even the dismissal of the head of the Moscow City Court Olga Egorova will solve any problems of society.
How the resignation of the head of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov will not make the elections fair. The authorities will simply appoint the next executor to the same post and there is no reason to believe that the new executor will be much better than the previous one. And if we remember that civilian control over power before the recent elections was something ephemeral for both citizens and the government, then there is hardly any hope that the government will instantly change after seeing tens of thousands of protesters in the squares.
“Soldiers of the system” - be it chairmen of precinct election commissions or judges - will simply become afraid to make obviously illegal decisions. And then we can expect fair elections and a fair trial.
However, this is not a matter of two days or months. The executive branch obviously will not want to make the judicial system truly independent, because this will significantly limit the freedom of maneuver on fundamental political issues. And this is already beyond the competence of Judge Borovkova and other judges in the Russian Federation. This is a matter of agreement between citizens and authorities.
In this sense, the “Udaltsov case” can be considered a marker of the process - after all, citizens who do not share his views and aspirations actively stand up for the leftist activist. But if such a reaction from a statistically significant number of citizens does not become a constant background to the work of the authorities, little will change.