Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 28 – Even in places
where protests have never taken place, Moskovsky komsomolets says,
provincial officials are busily taking advantage of the new law imposing fines
on Russians who insult the authorities, raking in money for themselves but
further setting the population against them.
In fact, the Moscow paper reports,
the controversial law, which Vladimir Putin signed only on March 18, has been
applied even more actively in regions far from Moscow than in the major cities
(mk.ru/politics/2019/07/28/zakon-ob-oskorblenii-vlasti-udaril-po-rossiyskoy-glubinke.html).
Before the Kremlin leader approved
the measure, the Presidential Council on Civil Society urged him not to sign it
because of its lack of precise definitions and thus would open the way to
extraordinary arbitrariness. That is exactly what has happened, especially in
regions where officials are using it in ways far from what even its backers favored.
The paper says that people in the
regions have a long tradition of being sharply critical of local officials even
if they are entirely loyal to Putin and the Russian government. Now, as it shows
in a series of examples, the local officials have a weapon to fight back and
they are using it with enthusiasm.
The paper suggests that the
applications of this law in the regions do not reflect the growth of opposition
there but rather problems with the law itself. But while Moskovsky
komsomolets doesn’t say so, it is almost a certainty that people in the
regions who are victims of arbitrary application of this law may very well acquire
opposition attitudes.
If that is the case, the central
authorities will only have itself to blame. The Kremlin pushed through and
approved a law full of holes and lacks the interest or ability to ensure that
officials beyond the ring road don’t apply it in ways that will backfire on the
Russian government as a whole.
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