Right Cause seeks limit on parliamentary majority
The Right Cause party has made public several fresh political ideas, including the introduction of a fifty per cent limit for party representation in the parliament and abolishing such posts as the presidential plenipotentiaries in the regions.
On Friday, the party published a draft manifesto stating that the current situation in Russian politics is regrettable and suggested some urgent measures to improve it. “We work and feed our families not thanks to our state, but rather in spite of its actions,” the document reads.
Therefore, the party suggested that the current number of civil servants is cut two-fold, the transition to “professional state apparatus” and a reform of the presidential administration. The manifesto also proposed getting rid of presidential plenipotentiaries in all the regions, with the exception of the North Caucasus, as well as giving parliament the right to impeach individual members of the government and regional governors. The party also said that the regional gubernatorial elections must be re-introduced in Russia.
Right Cause leader Mikhail Prokhorov also suggested changing the Russian Constitution in order to fight the monopoly on power. Prokhorov suggested that for the next two terms, no party could receive more than 226 seats in the 450-seat parliament. He also said that the ruling party must not receive more than half of the posts in the parliamentary committees and to give 25 percent of all seats to single-constituency deputies.
Interestingly, on the same day the manifesto was made public, Right Cause fell victim to disinformation. The Izvestia daily reported that it possessed its own copy of the draft program which suggested a much more radical step – to combine the presidential and prime ministerial posts. The news immediately got attention as the new leader of Right Cause, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, has earlier denied
his intention of running for president, but said that he would not mind becoming the chairman of the government. Right Cause refuted Izvestia’s report a few hours after it appeared online, calling it “complete disinformation”.
Interestingly, the Nazavisimaya Gazeta newspaper also reported on Friday that another victim of media disinformation, State Duma deputy from the Fair Russia faction Oleg Mikheyev, offered to cooperate with Prohorov’s party as well as a “non-aggression pact”.
In mid-August, the LifeNews web-site, which belongs to the same media holding as Izvestia daily, claimed that deputy Mikheyev was spotted at a private party wearing the Nazi Kriegsmarine uniforms (apparently posing as Admiral Wilhelm Canaris). Mikheyev said that the report was a pure fabrication and the picture in it had been photoshopped. He then filed a lawsuit against Lifenews seeking a court order for the web-site to publish a retraction of the report and the symbolical sum of one ruble in compensation from the media and the journalists who prepared the report.
The Right Cause party said that they were ready to cooperate with all political parties, apart from the parliamentary majority United Russia.
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