Catch up and overtake Albania

Constitutional Court decides whether district councils should be elected

A resident of the Moscow region, Nikolai Savostyanov (chief editor of the Nara newspaper he publishes), was going to run for deputies in the Naro-Fominsk municipal district. But he could not do this, because the district council in the fall of 2009 ahead of schedule ...

A resident of the Moscow region, Nikolai Savostyanov (chief editor of the Nara newspaper he publishes), was going to run for deputies in the Naro-Fominsk municipal district.

But he could not do this, because the district council dissolved ahead of schedule in the fall of 2009, and its new composition was immediately formed without any elections: by “delegating” from the municipal councils of settlements located on the territory of the district.

Deciding that in this way he was being deprived of the constitutionally guaranteed right to be elected to local self-government bodies, Savostyanov went to court. But unsuccessfully. First, the Moscow Regional Court, and then the Supreme Court, refused him, deciding that his rights had not been violated in any way.

Then Savostyanov appealed to the Constitutional Court with a request to cancel the norm of the federal law on the general principles of the organization of local self-government, which allows for the possibility of assembling district councils without elections.

According to this law, in settlements and urban districts, municipal councils must be elected directly by citizens. And in municipal districts, two options are possible: either elections, or the formation of "representatives of the settlements." At the same time, each "settlement" council sends its head and several more deputies to the district council (an equal number from each of the settlements, regardless of the population).

Savostyanov considers this principle unconstitutional - its application in practice made it possible not to call elections after the early termination of the powers of the Naro-Fominsk District Council. He also violates, in his opinion, the European Charter of Local Self-Government, according to which the right to local self-government is exercised by councils (assemblies) consisting of "members elected by free, secret, equal, direct and universal suffrage."

“Early termination of the powers of all deputies, according to the law, entails early elections,” Savostyanov said, speaking at the Constitutional Court. - This is also recorded in the ruling of the Constitutional Court of July 2, 2009. And we have a self-proclaimed council seized power without elections; both us and our descendants - 145,000 people living in the Naro-Fominsk region - were forever deprived of the right to elect and be elected to the regional Council of Deputies, because the law does not provide for a procedure for returning to direct elections.

Representatives of the authorities invited to the Constitutional Court spoke in defense of "delegation".

“In democratic countries, there are both direct elections and elections with the help of electors - this is in line with democratic principles,” Alexei Alexandrov, representative of the Federation Council in the Constitutional Court, assured.

“The applicant can exercise his right to vote in the elections in his urban settlement,” Mikhail Krotov, the presidential representative in the Constitutional Court, echoed him. According to him, the local community "has the right to decide on the transition to another system of formation of LSG bodies, taking into account historical and local traditions." Krotov did not specify what kind of “local traditions” that had developed in the Moscow region demanded to abandon the elections, but he amused the audience with a list of states where the principle of “delegation instead of elections” is implemented: Andorra, Albania, Panama, South Africa and Ecuador.

The decision of the Constitutional Court will be announced within a month and will be "significant". In fact, we are talking about a legal assessment of one of the key political "trends" of the current regime: the steady exclusion of citizens from direct participation in the formation of power.