January 14 is the last day the State Duma will submit amendments to the second reading of the scandalous bill No. 17357-8 “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On the Sanitary and Epidemiological Welfare of the Population” (aka “the bill on QR codes”) — the government announced the postponement of the project. It is not known how exactly, but the second reading of the draft is no longer included in the calendar of the spring session of the State Duma (until the end of July).
Petr Sarukhanov/Novaya Gazeta< /p>
The official reason given by Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova is as follows: the government “together with the United Russia party, in the face of high uncertainty in the development of the epidemiological situation, worked out a joint decision on the advisability of postponing consideration of the bill in the second reading.” They say that the project was prepared as a response to the spread of the delta strain, and now the “omicron” is coming from all sides, and “new challenges” have appeared.
New challenges have indeed appeared, but the postponement of the draft law on QR codes for an indefinite period is not connected with them at all.
And not at all with the United Russia party, which no one has yet offended by suggesting some kind of independent position that the government could “listen to”.
The emergence of a new, rapidly advancing strain of coronavirus should have forced to strengthen measures to combat its spread (for which, according to the official version, it was proposed to introduce QR codes), and not to postpone their introduction.
Therefore, the matter seems to be quite different.
What? Let's try to understand.
In December, before the first reading of the draft in the State Duma, they twisted the arms of regional parliaments (including the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly) with all their might, demanding at all costs to approve an obviously “raw” draft with numerous shortcomings. To, relying on the regional “approval”, to push through the necessary decision in the federal parliament.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova and head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova during a discussion of a bill on the use of certificates with QR codes for visiting public places. Photo: RIA NovostiMost opponents of the law (I can confirm this by analyzing appeals to me as a deputy) turned out to be not traditional oppositionists, but supporters of Putin, demanding “not to obey the dictates of the WHO”, frightening with a “global conspiracy against Russia”, referring to the “position of the Russian Orthodox Church” and generously supplying their protests with arguments about «fascism» and «segregation».
No violations of political rights have ever (again, judging by the appeals to myself over the past ten years) worried these people: neither political repression, nor an attack on freedom of speech, nor bans and dispersal of rallies, nor falsification of results elections, neither the «law of scoundrels», nor the introduction of «foreign agents» and «undesirable organizations», nor participation in the wars in Ukraine and Syria, nor the mutilation of the Constitution, nor the «zeroing» of Putin's presidential terms. And then, as they say, “they woke up in the morning” and, like a carbon copy, they began to scribble the same type of appeals, equating the inability to get into a cafe or shop to the “Holocaust”.