Deepali Kalia –
President Vladimir Putin signed a new law on June 4th which banned individuals designated as “extremists” or “terrorists” from running for public offices.
According to the new law, the leaders and founders of groups designated as “extremists” or “terrorists” won’t be able to run for elected office for 5 years after a court’s ruling to ban the group.
Similarly, the financial supporters and employees of these Court designated “extremists” or “terrorists” groups would also be barred from running for office for 3 years.
This particular move by Putin is being heavily condemned by the opposition as an effort to further circumscribe the political competition.
Tatiana Stanovaya , a political analyst of Carnegie Moscow and founder of R Politik, expressed her concerns by making the following statement with regard to the matter, “The law is part of a larger campaign against anti-regime behavior in Russia. The battlefield has become much larger, now, even a Russian citizen who participates in protests, retweets an opposition post or donates to opposition groups, face the risk of prosecution.”
The new law comes ahead of a court’s decision on whether to designate both Alexey Navalny’s, jailed kremlin critic, organizations, the anti-corruption one and political one as extremist groups following a suit which was filed in April by the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office.
Navalny was sentenced to imprisonment by a Moscow court earlier this year for allegedly flouting the probation terms of a 2014 case in which he had received a suspended sentence of 3 and a half years.
Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov on June 4th tweeted that the law signed by Putin wasn’t on accident.
The supporters of Navalny as a result face a possibility of being prevented from running in Russia’s upcoming parliamentary elections in September.