MOSCOW, February 6 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to change “an emphatically accusative and punitive deviation” of the Russian judicial system. The prime minister offered several measures to settle the problem in his article entitled “Democracy and Quality of the State”, which was published in the Kommersant daily on Monday.
“We will make the judicial system available for the Russian citizens. In particular, we will introduce the practice of administrative legal proceedings not only for business, but also for special hearings in disputes between citizens and officials,” the premier outlined the first step to settle the foresaid problem. He elaborated that “the spirit and sense of administrative and legal proceedings' practice are based on the fact that a citizen is more vulnerable than an official with whom he argues and the burden to gather evidence is shouldered on an administrative body, rather than a person, and, therefore, the practice of administrative legal proceedings is focused on the protection of the rights of citizens.”
The premier's second measure is to grant the right to public organizations to file lawsuits in defence of the interests of their members. “This will give an opportunity to a citizen to protect his rights, for instance, argue with the governor not alone, but on behalf of major public organizations,” Putin said.
The prime minister also believes it necessary to create an open database of decisions in the system of courts of general jurisdiction. “It is necessary to consider an option for Internet broadcasts of court sessions and the publication of verbatim reports on them. It will be immediately clear how someone works. What decisions should be taken on similar criminal cases, but with different composition of litigating parties. Where the motivation of the judge is dictated by a quite vague and non-transparent logic,” Putin substantiated his initiative.
Meanwhile, he called for “the revival of ‘judicial’ journalism that will allow to discuss broader and deeper legal problems of the society and to increase the level of legal consciousness of people.”