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Zyuganov promises to reform Constitution if elected president

Zyuganov considers the main problem of the present Constitution to be its “irresponsibility”

MOSCOW, February 16 (Itar-Tass) — Chairman of Russia’s Communist Party and a presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov promises to reform the Constitution if he is elected Russia’s president in March.

He said that the main problem of the present Constitution is its “irresponsibility.”

“Not a single branch of power reports to the nation: the president does not report to anybody, not a single minister is approved by the core committees of the State Duma of the Federation Council, and all our ministers are not professionals,” he said at a news conference on Thursday.

A new variant of the Constitution should solve this problem, he said. Constitutional Assembly should be organised to design it. Zyuganov ordered his trusted representative Yuri Boldyrev and Sergei Baburin, president of Russia’s state economy university to prepare it. In order to organize the Constitutional Assembly, it is necessary to adopt a law on it. The bill, Boldyrev said, had been with the State Duma for several years.

“It is necessary to adopt it,” he said.

Boldyrev said that the constitutional reform should result in organization “of a strong parliament with strong controlling functions.”

“The shameful law that presidents are not criminally responsible should be revoked, and the Accounting Chamber should not be integrated in the power vertical,” he said. He also called for clear listing of the Central Bank’s functions “to protect interests of the economy’s real sector, not of financial speculators.”

Boldyrev added that it is necessary to include in the Constitution the rights for referendums and to remove from it provisions priority of international laws over  Russian laws.

Gennady Zyuganov has big hopes for the Constitutional   Assembly.

“We have overcome the interlunation by having organized the Russian lands’ representation, which featured peasants, Strelets, merchants, all classes, and it was done. This year we celebrate the 400th anniversary of Minin and Pozharsky’s liberation of the country from Polish invaders, so now we need to follow suit,” he concluded.