Acting head of the authorities in the closed-access administrative territorial entity Bolshoi Kamen in the Primorye Territory Alexei Kletskin stated about his quitting of the United Russia Party in protest against a tougher law on rallies, the Kommersant daily reported. The policy of the party at the federal level recently “contradicts his personal convictions and life principles,” he said. The enacted law contradicts “the spirit and letter of the fundamental law” and creates “prerequisites for the formation of a police-controlled state, where each citizen is blame for the state authorities in advance, as he went out into the street with his friends,” Kletskin explained in his blog.
Alexei Kletskin refused to be a member “of the party, which is involved in taking this decision,” the newspaper noted. He heads the Bolshoi Kamen authorities since March 2011. He worked as deputy prosecutor in Vladivostok before this post.
Acting secretary of the United Russia regional political council Lyudmila Talabayeva told the Kommersant daily that “it is necessary to find out” the reasons for the demarche of the statesman. “As a lawyer and a former official of the prosecutor’s office Kletskin could have declared his position at the stage of the debates over the bill, introducing relevant initiatives,” she stated.
State Duma Vice-Speaker from United Russia Sergei Zheleznyak called the reason for Kletskin’s quitting of the party as “far-fetched.” Zheleznyak noted that “the media are constantly saying about the United Russia collapse.” These media reports were made after the resignation of the State Duma’s former vice-speaker from United Russia Lyubov Sliska and the transfer of deputy secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod party office and State Duma deputy Mikhail Barkovsky to the Alliance of the Greens – People’s Party led by Oleg Mitvol. “People leave and join the party, as United Russia receives 5,000-7,000 applications for membership each month,” Zheleznyak underlined.