Petersburg opposition dissolves in spring
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The Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, submitted to the city legislature a bill to dissolve the council of deputies of the Smolninskoye municipal district (MO). The reason for the development of the document was the decision of the courts to recognize the municipal council as inactive for more than three months. Opposition deputies consider these decisions unfair and unreasonable, and the dissolution is politically motivated. Meanwhile, two more municipal councils in St. Petersburg may soon be dissolved on the same grounds.
The draft law on the dissolution of the council of deputies of the municipality “Smolninskoye” appeared on government website Petersburg on April 5 and until April 18 passed anti-corruption expertise. The reason for its development was the decision of the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg to recognize the deputies of the council as inactive for more than three months – from December 24, 2020 to March 24, 2021. At the end of January 2022, the St. Petersburg City Court rejected the appeal against the decision of the first instance, and it came into force.
The deputies were “inactive” due to a conflict with the head of the municipality, Grigory Rankov (ER). Following the results of the 2019 elections in the municipality “Smolninskoye”, the majority of mandates (12 out of 20) were received by representatives of the opposition, primarily from the Yabloko party. However, to resolve fundamental issues, at least 14 votes are needed, therefore, for the entire period of work of the current convocation, not a single budget of the Moscow Region was adopted and the head of the district was not elected. Mr. Rankov remained in charge of the council as interim, who, after a conflict with the majority of council members, stopped convening meetings.
MPs were going on their own initiative on the porch of the council building, but numerous courts have recognized the decisions taken at these meetings as illegitimate.
Note that in the fall of 2022, some of the Smolninsk deputies joined to a public demand for the resignation of President Vladimir Putin and condemned the special operation in Ukraine, after which she was fined for discrediting the armed forces under Part 1 of Art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses.
On April 12, a second draft on the dissolution of the same council was published on the website of the city government, this time due to the deputies’ failure to comply with the decisions of the city court. Municipal deputies did not publish messages on their official resources about court decisions on a number of administrative cases, as they were ordered to. The prosecutor’s office of the Central District drew attention to this and appealed to the district court, which recognized the deputies’ inaction as illegal. The deputies tried to challenge this decision as well, but on April 4 it was approved by the City Court. The governor must submit the bill to the legislature no later than mid-May.
“The law spells out two cases in which the municipal council must be subjected to the dissolution procedure,” Grigory Rankov explained to Kommersant. “The first is when the deputies did not hold competent meetings for three months and this was established by the court. The second – if the deputies did not comply with the court decision. Both cases took place, and this was recorded by the court. The governor comes out with a bill to dissolve, it is imperative, he has no choice. There are bills for every reason. One has already entered the Legislative Assembly, the second will arrive within ten days.
According to Mr. Rankov, there are deputies in the Legislative Assembly who will want to stand up for Smolninskoye – Yabloko Boris Vishnevsky and Alexander Shishlov.
“Most of the “outrageous” in the municipal council were “Yabloko”, whom the party recommended for the elections. Shishlov and Vishnevsky are responsible for their charges,” he says.
Smolninsk deputies consider court decisions “unfair and unreasonable.” “In fact, the head of the Ministry of Defense, Rankov, abusing his right, blocked the work of the council, and the courts, taking his side, destroy all the principles of independence of the branches of government and the legislative foundations for the functioning of municipalities,” Yabloko Dmitry Balrukov told Kommersant. In his opinion, the dissolution is politically motivated and is connected with the deputies’ criticism of the decision of the head of state on the special operation.
The deputies, according to Mr. Baltrukov, appealed “to all the representative bodies of power of the Russian Federation” and are waiting for their answers, and also asked colleagues from other municipalities of St. Petersburg to give a negative review of the bills on dissolution. “I definitely count on support from at least my party colleagues,” Mr. Baltrukov stressed. Municipality Smolninskoye is an important municipality for United Russia, says deputy Nikita Yuferov (also Yabloko). “There is the government of St. Petersburg, the town hall, the head office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this is the central municipality, and it so happened that the residents chose the opposition municipal council,” he notes. Over the past few years, deputies, according to Mr. Yuferov, “were not allowed to work,” and “the prosecutor’s office and the police systematically worked” against them.
Mr. Yuferov believes that the governor’s bills will be supported, but the deputies are ready to challenge them in the courts and “drag out the process in every possible way.”
“They will hardly have time to dissolve us, in a year and a half there will be re-elections,” he says.
The council of the municipality “Smolninskoye” is not the first and not the last local council of St. Petersburg to face the procedure of dissolution. On April 11, the Dzerzhinsky District Court declared illegal the inaction of the deputies of the board of the Foundry District in similar circumstances, the deputies also intend to appeal the decision. In mid-April, after the city court rejected the appeal, the decision on the illegal inaction of the council of deputies of the Ligovka-Yamskaya municipality came into force. Raysud acknowledged this board is dormant in October 2022.
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