MOSCOW, December 15 (Itar-Tass) – A resolution wherein the European parliament calls for a new election to the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, is devoid of legal meaning and unacceptable from the moral and ethical viewpoint, the Federation Council – the upper house of Russian parliament – said in a statement Thursday.
“This resolution is devoid of legal meaning,” members of the upper house said. “It makes far-fetched conclusions on the bases of absolutely groundless claims that are not substantiated by any evidence.”
The statement calls attention to the fact that international observers, including the ones delegated by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights /ODIHR/, which reports to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe /OSCE/, have not published their official reports yet.
“It would be highly desirable for the European parliament as an agency of legislative power to refrain from meddling with the internal affairs of sovereign nations,” the Federation Council said adding that 65 million voters had come to the polls and the number of complaints over the organizational and other aspects of the election did not exceed 2,000.
“Even if one presupposes that all of these complaints are well-grounded, the case in hand is not more than 0.5% voters,” the statement said. “Considering the scale of the election campaign, it is very hard to believe it could be fully free or shortcomings.”
Members of the Federation Council voiced the confidence at the same time that “the judiciary agencies will investigate all the facts and complaints in a most scrupulous way.”
The upper house also pointed out the unacceptability of the European parliament’s resolution from the moral and ethical angle. “Its bossy overtones are insulting for the people of Russia.”
The Federation Council expressed its interestedness in the promotion of the relations of equitable partnership with the European parliament, saying however that a dialogue of this kind should be based on mutual respect and should envision a renunciation of any attempts to meddle with each other’s domestic affairs or to obtrude biased assessments or opinions.
Earlier in the day, Russia’s highest consultative public body reporting to the President, the Public Chamber, dismissed the European parliament’s resolution as a “glaring instance of interference in Russia’s internal affairs.”
“This decision offers a glaring instance of interference in Russia’s internal affairs and manifests an attempt to destabilize the social and political situation in this country,” the chamber said in a statement. “This attempt, which stems from a shortage of knowledge of real facts, borders on a provocation, since the members of European parliament could not help foreseeing a reaction that Russian society would offer to the actions any sovereign state would find insulting.”
The statement said that especially upsetting is the timing of the resolution, which the European parliament passed on the eve of the Russia-EU summit. The latter might have marked a breakthrough in the course of building the relations of partnership and facilitating the rapprochement of our peoples.
Mikhail Ostrovsky, the Public Chamber secretary, said the resolution could be compared to “Cold War heartburn.”
“This is an instance of unprecedented interference in the affairs of an independent state,” he believes.
Wednesday, the European parliament passed a resolution urging the Russian authorities to annul the results of December 4 parliamentary election in this country.
The document said it was necessary to hold a new free and fair election after a registration of all the political parties.
According to the European MPs, Moscow should take a decision on the repeat election proceeding from the provisional findings of the ODIHR, the Moscow-based Golos human rights association, the demands allegedly made by hundreds of thousands of protesters, and the opinion of the former Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev.