The case of election trios
The elections are over for everyone except the Constitutional Court. Yesterday, it began considering a request from 36 members of the Federation Council, who asked the Constitutional Court to check the constitutionality of the provision of the Law on Elections of State Duma Deputies, according to which the elimination of a candidate belonging to the first three of the party list entails the deregistration of the entire list.

Last year, three parties suffered from this provision of the law - the LDPR, the Conservative Party of Entrepreneurs (RCPP) and the Kedr movement. The leapfrog with the expulsions and reinstatements of these parties lasted two months.
First, back in October, the Central Election Commission refused to register the LDPR, excluding the second and third numbers on the list, Anatoly Bykov and Mikhail Musatov, from the list for providing false data in the declaration. The first one forgot to indicate a jeep and a house in Krasnoyarsk, the second one - three Mercedes. On November 3, the CEC did not register the RKPP due to the fact that the income data submitted by the second number on the party list, Yuri Antonov, differed from the data of the Ministry of Taxes by more than 100 thousand rubles. And finally, on December 10, the Central Election Commission canceled the registration of Kedr, since the second and third numbers on the list, Vladimir Petrov and Ivan Okhlobystin, themselves withdrew their candidacies.
If everything ended like that with Kedr, then the story with the Russian Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party continued. The “entrepreneurs” filed a lawsuit, and on November 10, the Supreme Court ordered the Central Election Commission to register the RKPP. The Central Election Commission sent an appeal to the cassation board of the Supreme Court. He was refused, and the Central Election Commission registered the RKPP on November 22, while simultaneously complaining to the Presidium of the Supreme Court. While the presidium was thinking, on December 2, the Central Election Commission restored the LDPR, just in case. But on December 8, the Presidium of the Supreme Court denied the RKPP the right to register. And the next day, the Central Election Commission joyfully canceled the registration of both the Russian Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party.
Yesterday, Vice Speaker of the Federation Council Vladimir Platonov, who represented the interests of the authors of the request (received by the Constitutional Court back in November) in the Constitutional Court, said that the controversial norm deprives citizens of the right to elect their representatives to government bodies. Members of an electoral association suffer from it, having formally not violated anything, but with the cancellation of the registration of the list, they lose the right to be elected. According to Platonov, “electoral associations are not able to independently verify the accuracy of information about their candidates,” and therefore do not bear responsibility for their “troikas.”
The permanent representative of the State Duma in the Constitutional Court, Valery Lazarev, agreed with him: “In essence, I represent the party that is the defendant, but on Monday the State Duma Committee on State Building unanimously supported the initiative of the Federation Council. Unwittingly, I found myself in the position of a famous non-commissioned officer widow who must herself flog yourself."
True, Lazarev believes that the problem could be resolved amicably not in the Constitutional Court, but by amending the law (one can understand it: if the Constitutional Court says that the norm is constitutional, it will be quite difficult to repeal it). But Platonov did not agree with Lazarev: “This could drag on for a very long time. For example, we discussed the Law on the status of State Duma deputies and members of the Federation Council for two years! So I believe that the Constitutional Court is the shortest path to the truth.”
The real opponent of Platonov and Lazarev was, of course, the Central Election Commission. Commission member Evgeniy Kolyushin did not see anything criminal in the contested clause of the law: “In the case of the RKPP, the Presidium of the Supreme Court recognized the legality of the actions of the Central Election Commission, and during the consideration of the case the question of the constitutionality of this norm was not raised.” Kolyushin also does not see the need to raise this issue now and believes that senators should not involve “other government agencies” in this dispute, including the Constitutional Court. Whose arguments will be preferable for the judges will not become clear until mid-April.
Kommersant will report on the decision of the Constitutional Court on this case.

VLADIMIR Kommersant-NIKOLAEV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 53 dated March 29, 2000, p. 2

The case of election threes