Medvedev has formed a government working group that will review internet petitions submitted through ROI (the Russian Public Initiative platform) before they are sent to the State Duma (the lower house of parliament). Like ours. The group includes 34 people and, unsurprisingly, the largest representation comes from the United Russia party. The group is headed by Mikhail Abyzov, the minister responsible for the "Open Government" initiative, and the committee includes such well-known information technology experts as Senator Ruslan Gattarov and deputies Sergei Zheleznyak and Robert Shlegel. http://top.rbc.ru/politics/05/06/2013/860613.shtml Such. Well-known. Experts. In information. Technology. Gattarov, who, together with Burmatov, set fire to a forest so they could later put it out and tweet about how "United Russia" was fighting forest fires.
Zheleznyak is our patriotic striped mattress, spending on his children's education abroad an amount far exceeding his annual income. Shlegel is a former member of Nashi (a pro-Kremlin youth movement), and the author of censorship amendments affecting the media and the internet. Magnificent. Twitter has it right: the only thing missing is Pekhtin. To be fair, of course, there are decent people in the group too. It will be interesting to watch the discussion between the decent and the indecent ones; I hope it will be open. As for us, our task now is to make one final push and be the first to collect 100,000 signatures. Then we'll see how Gattarov and Zheleznyak announce that "the people of Russia don't need such populist initiatives". The 70,000-vote threshold has been successfully crossed:
Now is exactly the time for those who kept putting off voting until the last moment to register on Gosuslugi (Russia's state services portal) right now and vote: Your votes are still needed. Those who still haven't voted are effectively encouraging: the Yaroslavl Region administration to buy a passenger car for 3.1 million rubles. the Federal Penitentiary Service to buy a Nissan Patrol for 3.07 million rubles. And also Russia's Interior Ministry, which apparently cannot fight crime without a Lexus GX 460 Premium costing 3.34 million rubles.
Let's struggle through it now, get registered, gather 100,000-120,000 people ready to push worthwhile and useful initiatives, and after that things will move quickly. Don't be lazy. The Interior Ministry is not going to give up its Lexuses on its own. http://navalny.ru/roi/