The State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation supported amendments to the second reading of the bill banning “foreign agents” from participating in elections at all levels. The table of amendments has been published in the database of the lower house of parliament.
Amendments are also planned to be made to the federal law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum.” It is proposed to add a clause to Article 33, according to which, by the time the documents required for registration for elections are submitted, the candidate “must cease to be a foreign agent.”
The committee also approved amendments prohibiting “foreign agents” from acting as observers and proxies of candidates in elections. At the same time, the amendments note that “a registered candidate cannot be included in the register of foreign agents.”
Initially, the entire bill concerned only typos and errors in the preparation of documents for nominating candidates for elections — it was adopted in the first reading still March 25th.
A few days later, Dmitry Gusev, a deputy from A Just Russia — For Truth, said that parliamentarians were working on amendments prohibiting “foreign agents” from participating in elections. This happened after several people declared “foreign agents” said that they were going to participate in the autumn elections to the Moscow City Duma.
For example, TV presenter Tatyana Lazareva spoke about this. “They say that the status of "foreign agent" does not discriminate against people at all. I want to check this, I want to check it out together with my colleagues <…> run for the Moscow City Duma this fall. I know that 44 more people, besides me, will do this, so that in the Moscow City Duma there will be 45 people who really worry about the fate of their homeland,” Lazareva said in an address dated March 26.
In early April the head of the A Just Russia faction Sergei Mironov and Dmitry Gusev introduced amendments for consideration, RBC wrote.