“The oligarch who was sentenced to nine years imprisonment announced his decision to claim the deputy chair”. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on August 15, 2005.
18 years ago, on August 15, 2005, the European public got to know that “While in prison, Khodorkovsky was up to get into Duma”. («Сидя в тюрьме, Ходорковский метит в Думу»). Under such a title an article was published in the newspaper “Le Figaro”. Its author, Alexander Saidre did his utmost trying to make a portrait of a "mutinous prisoner" which as early as yesterday was buying deputies wholesale and retail, and now, deciding to demonstrate himself his civic consciousness, announced his decision to run for a place in the Russian Parliament.
“He sits in prison. Without newspapers. Without a TV set. He is sharing a narrow prison cell with ten other inmates. But Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former owner of the once gigantic oil company Yukos, is preparing himself to launch a new political carrier and to become a deputy of the Russian Parliament! Sentenced to 9 years of incarceration for fraud and tax evasion, the oligarch declared his decision to take hold of the forthcoming elections and to claim a chair of deputy in the Lower Chamber of the Russian Parliament,” noted this author telling about the events of planet-scale measure which were developing around the electoral district Universitetsky No 201 of Moscow.
As reference: the mandate of the deputy of the 201 electoral district became free after the member of Parliament Mikhail Sadornov had returned his seals and taken the job in the banking sector.
The intention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky to become a member of Parliament is nothing more than an effort to loudly declare of himself before being transported to a penal colony after the first verdict, and this became clear, to put it mildly, from a rather strange behavior of the spearhead group to nominate this oil swindler as deputy candidate. The media covering that story were, perhaps, cheerful – they pretended that they "believe in miracles", arguing whether it would be possible to register Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a candidate before the verdict enters into force", but if it failed, then that would mean that "the authorities prevented him from becoming a candidate".
Here is an example of a publication from August 15, 2005, in which all commentators reason as if they had carbon paper copies – Khodorkovsky “wouldn’t get” the possibility to take part in the elections because his verdict would enter into legal force by that time. The position, by and large, is well known – Mikhail Khodorkovsky is innocent as a lamb in so far as he sponsors human rights projects and other programs of the “civic society”.
"The candidate status will not save him"
And, as to the legal component of the situation, it was clearly exposed as early as August 10, 2005 – no mandate will redeem him from criminal prosecution. "If he were in a pre-trial detention facility, he would have the electoral rights, but the sentence has already been passed on him, so the Central Electorate Commission can use this argument and refuse to register him as a deputy candidate”, says Suren Avakyan, head of the Chair of the constitutional and municipal law of the law department of the Moscow State University. According to him, the pause in the criminal responsibility during the campaign doesn’t come due for Khodorkovsky.
Apart from that, Article 47 of the Law of Election of deputies of the State Duma says that a registered deputy candidate can be convicted of criminal offense only by the decision of the Prosecutor General, so the status of a candidate will not defend him from new criminal cases with which exactly the Office of the General Prosecutor threatens him.
So, the intention of PR managers, liberals and adjoined to them activists was simple – to “flip the bird” to the authorities taking it from the pocket, at the expense of the inmate.
The leader of the party “Our Choice” Irina Khakamada who was a member of the initiative group, made, apparently, at the request of sponsors, the following statement – she understands that Mikhail Khodorkovsky "will never become a deputy mandate", and his advancing is "some significant gesture which has to demonstrate to the authorities the solidarity, courage, and strength of the democratic opposition, and, above all, of Khodorkovsky himself”. They say that Khakamada, with advancing age, has grown wiser.
Shenderovich, instead of Khodorkovsky, “went to the common people”
However, the efforts to raise the standard of liberalism failed. Members of the opposition whom the authorities permanently “prevent from taking part in elections” could not properly carry out their project. As expected, the guilty verdict with regard to Khodorkovsky came into legal force on September 22, 2005. That said, the Moscow District Court commuted the sentence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev closing the case on several episodes and reduced by one year their prison sentences.
And, secondly, the political part of the “liberal gesture of courage” ended in an unexpected way – nobody among the supporters of the recommendation of Khodorkovsky wanted particularly to pick up the fallen standard of liberalism. There were a lot of speculations about the nomination of some "alternative candidate" – in question came some serious candidates, including Mikhail Kasyanov. But the whole story ended up with the nomination of the satirist Viktor Shenderovich who after the communication with the citizens forced out of himself: “Went to the common people – now wash myself”. Quite a characteristic aphorism, in the spirit of “the moral imperative” of the little hanging group that failed the elections in the district where voters “traditionally are inclined to vote for democratic candidates”, points out the website Prigovor.ru
(See the previous story: “Kudrin compared the swindler from Yukos with swindlers from Enron.” The corporation Enron was one of the biggest sponsors of the pre-election campaign of George W. Bush, but nobody called its dodgy managers “prisoners of conciseness”). The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on August 14, 2002, and 2003.
16 years ago, on August 15, 2005, the European public got to know that “While in prison, Khodorkovsky was up to get into Duma”. («Сидя в тюрьме, Ходорковский метит в Думу»). Under such a title an article was published in the newspaper “Le Figaro”. Its author, Alexander Saidre did his utmost trying to make a portrait of a "mutinous prisoner" which as early as yesterday was buying deputies wholesale and retail, and now, deciding to demonstrate himself his civic consciousness, announced his decision to run for a place in the Russian Parliament.
“He sits in prison. Without newspapers. Without a TV set. He is sharing a narrow prison cell with ten other inmates. But Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former owner of the once gigantic oil company Yukos, is preparing himself to launch a new political carrier and to become a deputy of the Russian Parliament! Sentenced to 9 years of incarceration for fraud and tax evasion, the oligarch declared his decision to take hold of the forthcoming elections and to claim a chair of deputy in the Lower Chamber of the Russian Parliament,” noted this author telling about the events of planet-scale measure which were developing around the electoral district Universitetsky No 201 of Moscow.
As reference: the mandate of the deputy of the 201 electoral district became free after the member of Parliament Mikhail Sadornov had returned his seals and taken the job in the banking sector.
The intention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky to become a member of Parliament is nothing more than an effort to loudly declare of himself before being transported to a penal colony after the first verdict, and this became clear, to put it mildly, from a rather strange behavior of the spearhead group to nominate this oil swindler as deputy candidate. The media covering that story were, perhaps, cheerful – they pretended that they "believe in miracles", arguing whether it would be possible to register Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a candidate before the verdict enters into force", but if it failed, then that would mean that "the authorities prevented him from becoming a candidate".
Here is an example of a publication from August 15, 2005, in which all commentators reason as if they had carbon paper copies – Khodorkovsky “wouldn’t get” the possibility to take part in the elections because his verdict would enter into legal force by that time. The position, by and large, is well known – Mikhail Khodorkovsky is innocent as a lamb in so far as he sponsors human rights projects and other programs of the “civic society”.
"The candidate status will not save him"
And, as to the legal component of the situation, it was clearly exposed as early as August 10, 2005 – no mandate will redeem him from criminal prosecution. "If he were in a pre-trial detention facility, he would have the electoral rights, but the sentence has already been passed on him, so the Central Electorate Commission can use this argument and refuse to register him as a deputy candidate”, says Suren Avakyan, head of the Chair of the constitutional and municipal law of the law department of the Moscow State University. According to him, the pause in the criminal responsibility during the campaign doesn’t come due for Khodorkovsky.
Apart from that, Article 47 of the Law of Election of deputies of the State Duma says that a registered deputy candidate can be convicted of criminal offense only by the decision of the Prosecutor General, so the status of a candidate will not defend him from new criminal cases with which exactly the Office of the General Prosecutor threatens him.
So, the intention of PR managers, liberals and adjoined to them activists was simple – to “flip the bird” to the authorities taking it from the pocket, at the expense of the inmate.
The leader of the party “Our Choice” Irina Khakamada who was a member of the initiative group, made, apparently, at the request of sponsors, the following statement – she understands that Mikhail Khodorkovsky "will never become a deputy mandate", and his advancing is "some significant gesture which has to demonstrate to the authorities the solidarity, courage, and strength of the democratic opposition, and, above all, of Khodorkovsky himself”. They say that Khakamada, with advancing age, has grown wiser.
Shenderovich, instead of Khodorkovsky, “went to the common people”
However, the efforts to raise the standard of liberalism failed. Members of the opposition whom the authorities permanently “prevent from taking part in elections” could not properly carry out their project. As expected, the guilty verdict with regard to Khodorkovsky came into legal force on September 22, 2005. That said, the Moscow District Court commuted the sentence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev closing the case on several episodes and reduced by one year their prison sentences.
And, secondly, the political part of the “liberal gesture of courage” ended in an unexpected way – nobody among the supporters of the recommendation of Khodorkovsky wanted particularly to pick up the fallen standard of liberalism. There were a lot of speculations about the nomination of some "alternative candidate" – in question came some serious candidates, including Mikhail Kasyanov. But the whole story ended up with the nomination of the satirist Viktor Shenderovich who after the communication with the citizens forced out of himself: “Went to the common people – now wash myself”. Quite a characteristic aphorism, in the spirit of “the moral imperative” of the little hanging group that failed the elections in the district where voters “traditionally are inclined to vote for democratic candidates”, points out the website Prigovor.ru
(See the previous story: “Kudrin compared the swindler from Yukos with swindlers from Enron.” The corporation Enron was one of the biggest sponsors of the pre-election campaign of George W. Bush, but nobody called its dodgy managers “prisoners of conciseness”). The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on August 14, 2002, and 2003.
