The Duma Will Judge Zhirik Themselves
// Agenda
On Thursday, the Council of the State Duma passed a decision not to request that the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation give a legal evaluation of the violent encounter between Deputy Speaker if the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Homeland faction deputy Andrey Savelyev. On Wednesday, Deputy Speaker Boris Gryzlov stated that such a request would be made, but the Duma Council entrusted the case to the Parliamentary Committee on Ethics. Nonetheless, Savelyev intends to appeal to the Prosecutor General personally, and Zhirinovsky has also made his own appeal.
The fight that broke out on Wednesday in the State Duma between the Homeland and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia deputies forced Gryzlov to announce that an appeal would be made to the Prosecutor General of Russia to make a legal evaluation of the actins of the combatants. Gryzlov said that the appeal would be considered by the Duma Council on Thursday. However, on Thursday, the Council approved a decision that had already been passed by the Duma to silence Zhirinovsky for a month and not to send the appeal to the Prosecutor General. The most that the deputies have decided on is to hand over the videotape of the fight to the Committee on Ethics and to question the participants in that fight. The timetable for the committee's decision on the material has not been determined. “There is absolutely no need for the council as a whole to prepare for that; the committee can do that themselves,” said Gennady Raikov, head of the Committee for Ethics, when asked about the plans of the parliament to appeal to the Prosecutor General.
Gryzlov told journalists that punishment for the violators of parliamentary discipline would still be made. “The decision to take preventative and punitive measures in that conflict has been made,” he said, without specifying what they would be. The Committee on Ethic has also been charged with preventing future conflicts.
On Thursday, the main participant in the fight, without waiting for the decision of the Council, began his own campaign. Vladimir Zhirinovsky sated at a press conference at AiF Novosti news agency that he has already file d a statement with the Prosecutor General “not only Savelyev” but also about the behavior of Homeland Duma faction leader Dmitry Rogozin. Calling them the “political opponents” of the LDPR, the leader of that faction, Zhirinovsky, vented all his anger at its leader, Rogozin, accusing him of “arbitrariness” in regional elections.
Speaking of his participation in fisticuffs in the Duma, Zhirinovsky insistently presented himself as the innocent victim. “They hit me, I didn't do anything, I didn't hit anyone, you will see on the tapes that they hit me. I have experience already!” he said. Concerning the question of his spitting at Savelyev, Zhirinovsky said, “Spitting is with saliva, but foo isn't spitting.” Zhirinovsky accused journalists of causing his problems. “They turn political action into rumor,” he said. He was also indignant that they had denied him the right to speak. “They mistake will be corrected too,” he promised.
Savelyev intends to send an appeal to the Prosecutor General in the near future. In the meantime, Homeland and the Communists intend to respond jointly. On Thursday, those factions issued a proposal to all interested parties. In the text of it, Zhirinovsky's statement is characterized as “a violation of human morals, coming clean from the water every time” and as a provocation of “unparliamentary behavior, rudeness, fighting, threatening physical violence, doing violence and even murder.” Besides insisting on denying the vice speaker his deputy's mandate and taking away his legal immunity, his colleagues in the Duma have declared a boycott of Zhirinovsky and will not participate in television or radio broadcast in which he is present. The Prosecutor General has been asked to examine the complaints against Zhirinovsky from deputies and citizens as soon as possible.
Suzanna Farizova, Maria-Luiza Tiramaste
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 01, 2005
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