As you may recall, at the end of February the Open Government initiative refused to submit our bill to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). We were prepared for that and, without waiting for the formal rejection, moved on to the next step — submitting the bill through regional legislative assemblies. Any regional parliament has the right of legislative initiative, meaning it can pass a resolution to send a bill to the State Duma, and then Duma deputies are required to consider it. As of today, activists in several regions (St. Petersburg, Astrakhan Region, Samara, Orenburg, and Kirov) are already working with regional deputies: finding out their position on Article 20 and trying to submit the bill through regional parliaments.
We want to make sure that every one of the country’s many regional deputies is forced to formally state their position on #Twenty. In effect, we will simply sharpen the divide and split the country’s politicians into those who are for it and those who are against it.
Interestingly, most United Russia party members do not vote “against,” apparently understanding how unpopular that would be, and instead simply do not take part in the vote. Well, that’s a position too.
St. Petersburg
Many thanks to Maxim Reznik for trying to get our initiative onto the agenda. There have already been two attempts, but so far they have not succeeded. On the second attempt, the result was: 21 in favor, 0 against, 0 abstentions, 27 did not vote.
You can watch the video of the session of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly here. Reznik also included a named list of those who voted in this post.
Astrakhan
The vote on submitting it to the State Duma took place here on March 27. The results: 15 in favor, 15 against, 12 abstained. There are 58 deputies in total. The voting record will be available next week.
Here is the announcement that the issue was added to the agenda. The presenter was Oleg Shein.
The Astrakhan Duma’s opinions on the bill and the Astrakhan Duma deputies’ responses to inquiries are identical down to the comma — it’s ridiculous.
Kirov
First, it turned out that back in 2013, United Russia members in Kirov had already killed the vote on Article 20. You can read about it in Vitaly Bramm’s post.
On March 27 in Kirov, right outside the regional legislative assembly, PP activists held a picket with an information cube about Article 20 and asked questions of regional deputies. The local press published an excellent report about it. Among other things, it includes a quote from deputy Dmitry Russkikh, who supported the picket:
We are ready to help regional activists who want to submit the #20 bill through their regional parliament, and we have prepared instructions
Here you can read a detailed step-by-step guide on what needs to be done to submit the #20 bill.
Getting the issue of having regional assembly deputies submit an initiative to the State Duma on the Article 20 bill onto a legislative assembly agenda is difficult, but possible. It is also a form of political pressure on State Duma deputies, who can no longer ignore our campaign and now speak about it with alarm during plenary sessions.
Here, take a look at this video of faction representatives speaking. Dmitry Gorovtsov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, speaks in favor of adding an article on illicit enrichment to Russia’s Criminal Code. At the 9-minute mark, he says:
In short, the deputies are worried. We need to make them worry even more.