How the idea of ​​a referendum against raising the retirement age failed

Right is a meaningless piece of paper, if there is no public

and political force capable of reinforcing this right

Vladimir Lenin

On October 17, the Central Election Commission of Russia refused to register the Unified Federal Initiative Group for holding a referendum to increase the retirement age consisting of united regional groups, and stopped all the procedures for initiating a referendum.

According to the law, on October 17, to register a unified federal initiative group, signatures of representatives of 43 regional initiative groups under a document with a single referendum issue are needed. The Unified Federal Initiative Group, where representatives of the Communist Party and “Fair Russia” prevailed, had only 13 such signatures. At the end of September, representatives of the groups held a meeting in Moscow, where they approved a single issue of a referendum of five initial options. However, with the required minimum, 43 came representatives of only 13 regional subgroups registered in 68 regions.

Where were the rest?

Of the representatives of the alternative Communist Party and the “fair Russia” subgroups (in total 60) were present by representatives of the Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and Orenburg regions. According to the secretary of the meeting of the Federal Initiative Group, the first secretary of the Altai regional committee of the Communist Party of the Communist Party of the Communist Party, Maria Prusakova, authorized by all regional subgroups were invited. "The creators of most subgroups did not even think that they would have to do something further."

Why did most regional groups do nothing?

Here is an example of a referendum initiative group on pension reform in Mari El. Previously, the initiative group of the Communists formed an initiative group of an unknown group of social activists - state employees, workers of rural, settlement and city administrations, cultural institutions and trade union cells. According to the law, such an initiative group in the region can only be one, so the initiative group of the Communists was not registered. Of course, the registered initiative group of the finger did not hit the finger to contribute to the All -Russian referendum, since its members were actually not interested in this referendum. A similar situation was repeated in most regions. I suspect that the instructions to create such pseudo -groups of the referendum was lowered from the Kremlin for understandable purpose.

Here are just the initiators of the referendum on the cancellation of raising the retirement age, led by the Communist Party and SR, did nothing to avoid a referendum disruption. These parties had lawyers who were obliged to anticipate such a development of events. Therefore, the regional initiative groups of the Communist Party and SR were supposed to start their meetings the next second after the CEC launched the referendum procedure on August 17. Therefore, even before this date, the party had to prepare the asset of these groups.

None of this was done. Why?

I suspect, because the leadership of the Communist Party and SR was blessed under the Kremlin and, deep down, did not want any referendum. But the person must be preserved before the voters, and therefore such an initiative was put forward, but at the decisive moment conscious inaction was allowed.

Immediately after the decision of the CIK, on ​​October 17, it is possible to initiate a new referendum on the same issue, but one of the initiators of the reference Ilya Sviridov considers this to be “meaningless”.

Almost all party leaders of the system opposition on this issue are silent. I do not exclude that the Communist Party will arrange some “folk referendum” on pension reform that has no legal significance, but the results of which the party leaders will constantly talk-this is how we are fighting reform! A new attempt to conduct a legal referendum (by the way, due to the fact that raising the retirement age has already become a law, the issue of the referendum would still have to be changed) no one will undertake, but everyone will constantly recall the breakdown of this referendum, without mentioning their role in this disruption.

In fact, everyone has already reconciled that the retirement age has been increased. Events, in connection with the adoption of this law, once again showed the dependence of the systemic opposition on the Kremlin, the weakness of organizational resources and the unpopularity of the people of Navalny, etc., who could not do anything to counteract this law. But the main thing is that we saw the deepest inertia of the majority of the population of Russia, which will become poorer after the reform. Polls recorded the extreme unpopularity of the reform. But this unpopularity did not encourage the majority of the population for active actions - rallies, strikes (for the latter, even no one called - by the way, why?), The ostracism of supporters of reform among state employees and regional deputies who are forced to communicate with the people, or the same state employees - members of the referendum pseudo -groups, which were written above. The opinion of people against the reform was manifested only in the results of a smaller part of the regional elections of September 2018, which came to power of some systemic opposition (in most regions, United Russia won as if nothing had happened). Even if these oppositionists would like to cancel pension reform (and we saw that in fact they do not want it), there is no authority at the regional level.

With the passivity of the majority of the population, it was easy to disrupt a referendum, even if the Communist Party showed more energy in its implementation.