Branches of government against the Constitution

Article 18 is one of the most obscure, but it is the key

“Human rights and freedoms are directly applicable. They determine the meaning, content and application of laws and the activities of the legislative and executive authorities, local self-government, and are provided with justice.

In defense of this article - like the 31st (on freedom of assembly), or the 14th (on a secular state), or the 41st (on free medical care), rallies and pickets are not held. Too bad, it would have been worth it. Because this article is key. It says that the only task of all three "branches of power" is to take care of the constitutional rights of citizens.

The legislature should enact laws aimed at making it as easy as possible for citizens to exercise these rights. The executive power must ensure the most convenient use of these rights for citizens. Justice must punish violations of these rights.

In Russian practice, the opposite is true.

Legislation is aimed at complicating the implementation of constitutional rights. The executive power creates maximum obstacles for the use of these rights. And justice does not punish those who violate these rights, but those who try to use these rights.

The two most illustrative examples are the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to elect and be elected to government bodies.

Let's take a look at the first of these rights - and look at Petersburg.

Both federal and city laws, instead of helping citizens exercise the right to freedom of assembly, make it as difficult as possible to exercise it.

The federal law on rallies and meetings turns the notification procedure for holding public actions (suggesting that notification is needed only so that the authorities have time to prepare and ensure the normal passage of the event) into a permissive one. And de facto - in the prohibitive.

According to this law, the executive power can offer the organizers of the action to hold it either in another place or at another time, and this offer cannot be refused: in case of refusal, the action is declared "inconsistent", and, therefore, illegal. And fraught with dispersal and detentions. Details are just below.

As for the St. Petersburg law on rallies and meetings, it tightens all possible "nuts" that it can.

Thus, the most popular places - Palace and St. Isaac's Squares and Nevsky Prospekt - were declared prohibited for public actions. For "hyde parks" (where you can freely gather without approval), the maximum number of protesters is set at only 200 people - for a city of 5 million people. And single pickets (which do not require approval) can be placed no closer than 50 meters from each other ...

Now let's talk about the activities of the executive branch, which most easily disrupts mass actions by offering to move them to obviously unvisited places.

At the same time, the imagination of the administration is boundless: the list of “explanations” for why a rally, procession or picket cannot be held exactly at the place and at the time the organizers want is inexhaustible.

For example: do you want to hold a rally at the Mariinsky Palace (where ZAKS works) to protest against the laws adopted there? Dangerous: the Blue Bridge across the Moika (the widest in the city, on which hundreds of cars park daily) may collapse. Do you want to hold a procession through the central streets? They are repairing the facades, you can’t go in any way. Do you want to go to the Champ de Mars? And it - what a failure - is occupied by another event. And now it has also been excluded from the list of Hyde Parks, and Smolny refuses to provide a new site in the center of St. Petersburg ...

As for proposals to transfer shares to other places, they are usually mocking. The clearest example is the “March Against Hatred” in memory of the scientist Nikolai Girenko killed by neo-Nazis, which always took place in the city center, Smolny suggested holding it either near a gas station on the Smolenka River, or near a garbage dump in Novoselki. And the city-wide "March in Defense of St. Petersburg" was proposed to be held either in Polyustrovsky or in Specific Park (on the outskirts of the city).

An important addition: all the described difficulties, of course, happen only when opposition parties and movements, protest groups fighting against the decisions of Smolny, or applicants for actions that are unpleasant for the authorities want to hold a rally, procession or picket. Loyal parties and activists do not experience any problems in coordination.

Finally, about justice - more precisely, about its absence.

Starting with the fact that participants in "inconsistent" actions are dispersed and detained in a rather harsh manner, and ending with the fact that the courts (as the author told Novaya Gazeta) almost always make decisions on punishing detainees based only on police protocols, and ignoring any arguments and evidence of the defense. There are almost no chances to be justified in such "accusatory justice" - rare exceptions only confirm the rule...

So all the "branches of power" oppose the Constitution in a united front.

Everything is the same with the right to vote and be elected: laws are written in such a way as to make it extremely difficult to participate in elections (starting with nomination), the executive branch prevents fair elections in order to ensure the desired result in dishonest elections, and the courts protect unviolated voting rights citizens, and the results of rigged elections...

There is only one way to change this abnormal state of affairs.

Change the government that opposes the Constitution until it itself changes the Constitution.