In early May 2012, Dmitry Medvedev, then the President of Russia, signed a new law that returned direct elections for the heads of the country's regions. The law came into force on June 1, 2012. From this moment on, the heads of the regions of Russia will be elected, and not appointed by the President, as was the case before. The new rules will apply to the head of the capital of Russia.
Guided by the provisions of the new law on the election of regional leaders, the United Russia faction of the Moscow City Duma has developed and submitted for consideration a number of amendments to the Charter of the capital. The changes concern the return to the political reality of the elections of the mayor of Moscow. The amendments may come into force as early as July 2012.
In accordance with the United Russia project, the head of the city will be elected by the residents of Moscow on the basis of direct equal suffrage by secret ballot for a period of 5 years. The mayor of the capital may be a citizen of Russia who does not have the citizenship of a foreign state and has reached the age of thirty.
The date of the elections, as follows from the proposed amendments, will be appointed by the Moscow City Duma. She will also have to make a decision on the date of voting on the recall of the mayor of Moscow, if the need arises, Izvestia reports. Since the current mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has been holding this position since October 2010, the next mayor elections may take place after his five-year term in this position, that is, no earlier than 2015.
The mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin, in an interview with the TV Center TV channel, said that the future elections for the mayor of Moscow should be transparent, constructive and competitive. He noted that he considers it possible for not only party candidates to participate in the elections, but also the so-called self-nominated candidates. The main requirement for an applicant for a high post is not belonging to a political party, but good skills of a business executive and manager, since the mayor has to deal with economic rather than political issues to a greater extent.
The previous elections for the mayor of the capital were held in December 2003. Thus, the distance between the two most important political events in the region will be at least twelve years. Now Moscow has to develop and adopt a separate law on the election of the mayor, which is not yet even in the draft. So far, the specifics of the procedure for holding the next mayoral elections are not entirely clear to either legislators or voters. It is assumed that when developing the procedure for implementing the election procedure, the recommendations and wishes of all factions represented in the Moscow City Duma will be taken into account.
