Lately all my posts have been about criminal cases — you could go crazy like this.
Let’s do something together that is fun, useful, and unpleasant for the rule of Crooks and Thieves (which immediately makes it more fun).
You’ve all heard that a few days ago the so-called "Russian Public Initiative" was officially launched.
This is supposedly the fulfillment of Putin’s campaign promise that citizens would now be able to put forward legislative initiatives themselves: collect 100,000 signatures, and the State Dupe State Duma must consider them.
Putin’s promises have been implemented in such a way that it becomes instantly clear why people call him a serial promise-maker.
Here is a "cheerful little internet-friendly chart"" showing that support from 100,000 citizens does not in any way guarantee consideration in the Duma, but instead guarantees some odd "legal reviews" and "consideration by a government authority."
In other words, the overwhelming majority of genuinely useful initiatives, even if backed by hundreds of thousands of people, will run into some deputy-ministerial / United Russia party scarecrow that stamps them: "THE PEOPLE DON’T NEED THIS."
Things are fine as they are, and this can’t be implemented — here are one thousand one hundred reasons why.
Read here:
Also, Russian citizens will become active participants in the legislative process, and will be able not merely to delegate their representatives to parliament, but to directly put forward legislative initiatives themselves. Thus, any public initiative that gathers no fewer than 100,000 verified signatures online will be mandatorily submitted for consideration by the federal parliament.**
Now look at the chart again.
See the difference? Make a note of it somewhere: once again he promised, and once again he lied.
Obviously, there has to be some kind of filter.
The most popular initiatives — the kind that would get instant support, like "Immediately execute Medvedev’s government and Putin’s administration" — are of course impossible at the legislative level.
Only at the practical level.
There’s no point in submitting those.
But the restrictions they introduced practically destroy the whole point of the idea.
Obviously, for pure PR purposes, the RPI will be used to push fluff initiatives from fluff groups.
Right now the most popular "public initiative" — submitted by "activists" on the very day the site opened — is repealing the "zero per mille" blood alcohol rule. It’s a sensible thing, but it’s obvious to anyone that the decision to repeal it has already been made. The United Russia idiots introduced it in the first place, and now they’re the same ones shouting, "it has to be repealed." Well then repeal it. Fix your own mistakes, you wreckers. Why present this as a "public initiative"? Besides that, there are obvious doubts that the vote count will be honest. The system is completely closed and impossible to monitor. What guarantee is there that an initiative like "Introduce a primary school subject called 'On the Kindness of the Party and the Government'" won’t get 100,000 votes in a single day with the help of a moderator’s button? And a proper initiative that the authorities dislike could collect a million votes, while the site shows only 25,000. These people falsify election results — are they really going to be shy about falsifying votes on the RPI, where there is no oversight at all? That’s a rhetorical question. Even so: if the authorities have left a sharp stick on the windowsill, why not pick it up and start poking them with it, chasing them around the room? A stick isn’t a bayonet, but it’s still satisfying. So, I propose we run a joint experiment in using the RPI. I spent a long time thinking about which initiative to use for the first test. Obviously there are all sorts of serious proposals and even full-scale reforms. Obviously there are simple but important things too. For example, ratifying Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption. But is that the right choice for a first try? Clearly, the initiative has to meet the following criteria: Absolute simplicity. No explanation needed. Supported by 99.99% of the population. Not supported by United Russia — the enemies of the people. Supported by all the "systemic Duma" parties except United Russia. Has already gone through initial legal discussion and contains no obvious legal "hooks" that could be used to stop it. So to me it’s completely obvious that for our cheerful experiment we should use RosPil’s draft law limiting the cost of cars for officials. Every new report about a car costing 7.5 million rubles for the Central Base Customs Office, or a car costing 4 million rubles for the Chechen Pension Fund, drives people mad. Our leaflets on this topic are always popular.
And they have an excellent effect. What we are proposing is supported by the absolute majority of the population. Walk up to any man in some remote village and ask: are you in favor of banning officials from buying cars that cost 6 million rubles? He’ll support the idea passionately, and a video of his vivid, colorful, emotional response will get plenty of views on YouTube. We publicly asked all factions in the State Duma for support for the bill, and it was officially and publicly backed by the Communist Party, the LDPR, and A Just Russia. The bill was submitted for consideration in three versions: two were introduced by Communist Party members (1, 2), and one more by Gennady Gudkov. United Russia members consistently shot down every version, while the government nitpicked and demanded revisions. As a result, we polished the bill to perfection, and now it can’t just be casually tossed aside. We even pushed the relevant Duma committee into saying it was "approved in principle." Even so, it has no prospects in the Duma right now — United Russia won’t let it through. They want their Mercedes. The idea is so overdue that even St. Petersburg has officially decided to ban state institutions from purchasing cars costing more than 1.1 million rubles. Here it is:
https://www.roi.ru/poll/petition/gosudarstvennoe_upravlenie1/zapret-chinovnikam-i-sotrudnikam-kompanij-s-gosudarstvennym-munitcipalnym-uchastiem-priobetat-legkovye-avtomobili-stoimostyu-svyshe-15-millionov-rublej/ We submitted not just an initiative, but an initiative with a ready-made draft law. All they have to do is take it and pass it. We added revisions based on the discussions of the past year: Lowered the maximum price from 2 million to 1.5 million rubles. Eliminated the possibility of bypassing the law through fake long-term leasing arrangements or other similar tricks. Added state corporations and companies with state ownership stakes (a shout-out to Skolkovo, Rostec, Rusnano, and Gazprom. You can drive Camrys and Teanas — it won’t kill you). All those brazen state and municipal enterprises will fall under it too. Took into account the changes connected with the upcoming entry into force of the Federal Contract System law. So what needs to be done now? Just collect 100,000 signatures. And for that, we need to promote the voting link EVERYWHERE possible. In an ordinary online vote, getting 100,000 is easy. But here the verification is as strict as it gets. Only people registered on the Gosuslugi (Russian government services portal) website can vote. Are you registered there? Exactly.
The assumption is that there are many millions of people there. At least 4 million. Obviously, 99% of them would gladly support our law. The only question is: where do we find them? In what corner of the internet? No one knows. So we need to hit the entire internet so hard that the first initiative to collect 100,000 signatures is ours — and so we can enjoy the sight of United Russia functionaries’ twisted faces as they try to figure out what to do with it. And then at every press conference Putin will be asked: you promised, didn’t you? You wanted initiatives? Well, here’s an initiative that literally everyone supports. So let’s promote this link (with this post or without it) absolutely everywhere we can. If you’re not registered on Gosuslugi, there’s still time to do it — it’s useful in any case. Sooner or later, you’ll have to register anyway. We want to make various ad banners and things like that to drive people here. We could also make some catchy stuff for social media. It would be good to create our own proxy site too, so people check in with us first and we can keep an alternative vote count, because they’ll steal votes. And so on. So if anyone has clever ideas for supporting the initiative, go ahead and implement them. We don’t need anything from our side except the link and the legal work that follows. Please help us. And every time you see some well-fed official’s face in a 5 million-ruble car bought with your money, get angry — and help us again. And help yourselves.