smi.ru

July 24, 2000

Yuri Luzhkov: Residence Registration in Moscow Is Our Thermopylae!

The City Government of Moscow has no intention of abolishing residence registration and will continue protecting the Muscovites against "unwanted guests", the Moscow Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has declared. In Mr. Luzhkov's opinion, this problem should be solved on a national level, the RIA "Novosti" news agency reported Saturday. The day before, the plenipotentiary representative of the Russian President in the Central Federal District, Georgy Poltavchenko, had spoken in favor of abrogating the Moscow law on residence registration as contradicting the federal legislation. According to Mayor Luzhkov, however, the Prosecutor-General's Office had found no violations of federal law in the city statute in question. A deputy of the Moscow City Duma, Alexander Krutov, told the TVC channel that the permissive principle of registration (i. e. a person arriving in the city has to seek permission from the authorities to be registered - translator's note) has to be replaced with the notification principle (i. e. on arriving

into the city, the person notifies the authorities of his/her new place of stay/residence - translator's note) so that the Moscow rules be brought into full conformity with federal law. In Krutov's opinion, "in general, on a nationwide scale, the Interior Ministry is unprepared" for introducing the notification system. Luzhkov himself said that he hoped to discuss the problem personally with the presidential plenipotentiary in the nearest future.

Comment: Poltavchenko, who was silent for over two months, has suddenly woken up and gotten down to business executing "the Sovereign's will", starting with the Russian capital. Why this has happened precisely at the moment is not very clear, as the heated discussion over abrogating residence registration was initiated already in 1999, by the then candidate to the Moscow mayoralty and currently another Presidential Plenipotentiary, Sergei Kirienko. Mr. Kirienko has long ago proven that the Moscow enactment is in contradiction with the Russian Constitution. Why it has taken Mr. Poltavchenko so long to grasp this long clarified problem remains obscure. On the other hand, given that the first round of the "boxing match" over "stripping naked" the Council of the Federation has been won by Putin, Poltavchenko's attack may be interpreted as a part of a more general offensive. Especially as Moscow is not the only place where the federal authorities have launched a political "preparatory bombardment" before the offe

nsive of July 26.