Not without embarrassment: about the first meeting of the Constitutional Court

The opposition parliament, in fact, turned out to be completely different from the parliament: the Ksovites met in a cinema bar at the fashionable Red October, voted by show of hands, cursed at each other, and the way Navalny led the first meeting was a bit like school meetings. I guess this is all quite nice. But is it serious?

It seems that the Constitutional Court is not the simplest story in the entire protest movement from the very beginning. Everyone was ready to tear their last shirt to make these elections take place. The idea itself seemed like something incredibly important. And then there was murmur and evil gossip: they say, Navalny wants to legitimize himself, and will keep the rest for furniture. However, everyone somehow quickly forgot about this and began to carefully watch the debates, post candidates’ programs and lists of their preferences. Well, we've all played a little too hard at democracy. Maybe because none of us really saw her face?!

The feeling was truly intoxicating until the DDoS attacks began on election day and the voting results became known. The monstrous predictability of the results, the almost complete victory of Navalny’s team, and even the new leftists who found themselves left behind - all this together disappointed many enthusiasts. Everyone was expecting something from the Constitutional Court, when severe pressure began on activists - Razvozzhaev was tortured, people disappeared, Facebook was buzzing for several days. They thought there would be some kind of serious statement, an emergency night meeting at a safe house, a multimillion-dollar rally. And the fact that none of this happened is actually not the problem of the Constitutional Court at all. It's like in a relationship: sooner or later there comes a time when romantic expectations only cause harm. Here we are today: we gathered for the first meeting at the club. There is no pathos, everything is liberal-democratic: restaurant tables moved in a row, Navalny is very touching in the role of chairman. The rest are really not particularly visible (an evil thought creeps in that this is really for furniture). The topic of the meeting is simple and obvious: political prisoners.

And Sergei Udaltsov, sitting on Navalny’s left hand, is not in the most enviable position. But either the first damn thing was lumpy, or it will always be like this now: nothing worthwhile seems to have happened at the meeting. 10 people didn’t show up at all.

How it is possible not to come to the first meeting of the council, which was elected, one might say, by the whole world and for which everyone was so rooted for, is not very clear. A natural question arises: why were these people chosen at all and what good were they? In addition, they still quarreled, Udaltsov did not mince words in relation to his colleagues in the Constitutional Court and the Central Election Commission (it seems that he does not fully believe in the fairness of even these elections). As a result, it was decided to mark the anniversary of the protest and take a ride on the metro to Lubyanka, where Udaltsov, Navalny and Yashin were tied up.

There is no need to reflect for a long time on how, for example, you can oversleep the first meeting of the Constitutional Court or not attend it at all, why waste time celebrating the anniversary of the protest, and so on. We need to ask three main questions, which I think will be answered in the near future: will the Constitutional Court be able to propose and (most importantly) organize real effective protests, will the Constitutional Court learn to speak on behalf of the entire opposition, and when will the people for whom they voted and stood in queues, will they start taking their business seriously?

We can only hope that by the next meeting (the date of which for some reason the Ksovites were also unable to accurately determine) Sobchak will have recovered, and Kashin will set the alarm clock in the night.