Early in October so called “Civil pool”, a coalition of public organizations, established to control the election process to the State Duma on 2 December, announced about its self-dissolution. It happened after Vladimir Putin made a statement to head the party “United Russia”. The “Pool” was created in spring 2007 by initiative of Ella Pamfilova, the Chairman of the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation. (29-OCT-2007)
Written by HRH Moscow/Inna Komar
Sources: http://www.novayagazeta.ru, http://www.lenta.ru, http://www.echo.msk.ru/
Pre-history
Early in October a so called “Civl pool”, a coalition of public organizations, established to control the election process to the State Duma on 2 December, announced about its self-dissolution. It happened on 1 October after Vladimir Putin made a statement to head the party “United Russia”. “The pool” was created in spring 2007 by initiative of Ella Pamfilova (right), the Chairman of the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation. It contained of NGOs such as the Moscow Helsinki Group (Liudmila Alekseeva), the Independent Election Institute (Aleksandr Ivanchenko) , the “Social compact” (Aleksandr Auzan), “Golos”/”Voice” (Liliya Shibanova) and others.
We were trying to save a dying Russian election system
In the interview to “Novaya Gazeta” Aleksandr Auzan reported why they dismissed the “Civil pool”. He said the following: “Based on the position the President anyhow doesn’t take part in the election campaign and his interest to carry it out to the limit legitimately, we were trying to save a dying Russian election system”. Hence, when the President made a decision to head the most popular political party in the Russian Federation, the “Civil pool” lost its sense for existence.
It was impossible from the very beginning
Liudmila Alekseeva (right) is also agree with her colleague. She made a statement to “Echo Moskvi” that from the very beginning she had doubts that such organization was appropriate in the conditions of present election law existence. The last correction to this law gives right to take part in elections only to those observers, who belong to one or another political party participating in elections. Thus, according to the law, independent observers are abandoned to watch after election process. It became impossible for coalition of NGOs to monitore the Russian elections in such situation, that`s why the “Civil pool” was dismissed.
It`s a pity, but the Russian society turned out to be not ready to have such alliance for is elections monitoring. The “Civil pool” web-site disappeared right after the organization was dissolved.
