Battle for respect

The idea to force power to be responsible for disrespect for the people becomes viral

Following Leo Schlosberg, who proposed measures to combat the rudeness of officials in relation to ordinary people (we can call this “Schlosberg package”), other political forces also came up with the initiative to punish the civil servants for rudeness. The most powerful move among the rest was made by a group of deputies from the Communist Party, which introduced to the State Duma a bill on the responsibility of officials not only for insulting citizens, but also as entire social groups. Valery Rashkin, Vera Ganzya, Olga Alimova and Alexei Kornienko propose to amend the laws “On the State Civil Service of the Russian Federation” and “On the municipal service in the Russian Federation”.

In general, the proposal of the Communists is very similar to the initiative of Schlosberg. Deputies from the Communist Party propose to ban civil servants to “public insulting statements, judgments, assessments, including in the media expressing a clear hostile attitude to individual citizens, as well as social (professional) or other groups of citizens.”

The punishment system is also identical: administrative fines with gradations from 50 to 500 thousand rubles. And how else to deal with rudeness, which has become too many - there can be no other logic, the authors of the bill consider.

So far, the initiative has not yet been considered on the merits, however, for its promotion - including in the regions - the Communist Party “I am ready to work with all healthy political forces,” Vera Hanzya, one of the co -authors, says that he was in the course of Schlosberg’s bill. In addition, periodically, the Communists have coalitions on certain issues with the LDPR and “fair Russia”: as a rule, this happens when it is necessary to show teeth in the fight against the majority of “United Russia”. But this is precisely that the majority, and Vera Hanzya is aware of this:

"Of course, our bill will be fail."

This is so and not so at the same time. Right now, United Russia has no interest in the approval of such a bill, since a considerable part of the resonant statements of officials comes from representatives of the ruling party. But, for example, the speaker of the lower house of parliament Vyacheslav Volodin in February proposed publishing dubious statements of deputies on the State Duma website, because "indeed, this is shame." In other words, if they want to adopt such a bill on top and “the conjuncture will contribute,” then this proposal can always be accepted, says political strategist Vladimir Perevozchikov. “What we see now is a declaration of intentions,” he explains in a conversation with the “new”. “But the system works wrong, and bills are adopted in a completely different way.” The media campaign, which will now obviously increase around the bill, is unlikely to bring any effect, the decision in any case will be Culuar and without taking into account the opinions of that “people”, adds carriers.

The current situation is also ambiguous by the fact that its “trolling” species does not carry any danger to the authorities, and if you approach the proposal in complete seriousness, then there are many holes, says political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin.

“At the heart of its own bills are still Erzatz,” he complains. “In a normal legal environment, disrespect for the people is punished in the electoral process, they simply do not vote for a particular policy.” And the terminology used, like the word “people” gives a wide field for abuse, even if it is hypothetically assuming that the bill will be adopted.

“People” is a category from the Soviet system of values, ”says Oreshkin. - On his behalf, the conditional “Comrade Stalin” always spoke. The right to decide to what extent and when the "people" are offended, citizens will not have in any case. So in the format of a consolidated attempt to snapping stupid and harmful laws on the part of the authorities, a new initiative looks good, but if this grin goes far, you will need to think very well so that it is not wrapped against the initiators themselves. ”