The Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights has begun receiving on-line questionnaires from people wishing to become members of the Council. However, there is only one application so far. Nevertheless, according to Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Council, "the main stream of applications will appear in early August and will grow till 15 August, when the submission period ends. There is an old truth that we are very slow to mount, but then we ride fast, but of course, it is desirable to ride in the right direction."
"The rules of the procedure have been on our web-site for a week already. These rules were reviewed and noted by the Council at a meeting on July 2. In addition,13 nominations were approved. Why are there 13 nominations? Because the decree of President Dmitry Medvedev dated February 1st 2011 has approved the number of the members of the Council; it is 40. On December 8th 2011, Irina Yasina and Svetlana Sorokina announced that they wanted to withdraw from the council, and in March 2012 they were excluded from the Council. Thus, we were 38. Then, in May, we received 11 applications to retire from various members of the Council, in particular from Alexander Auzan, Svetlana Gannushkina, Yuri Dzhebladze, Ida Kuklina, Fyodor Lukyanov and others, and thus there were already 27 people left. 11 and 2 make 13. We have got 13 empty seats. And we want to select the candidates for these empty seats by means of Internet technology, using Internet public consultations," Fedotov explained.
He also recalled that "the only voter in this procedure is the president of Russia, no one else. My mission is offering him a candidate for the selection. We agreed that there would be at least three candidates for each nomination. The receipt of applications will end on August 15th. From the 15th to the 31st of August we will process the applications, if, of course, there is more than one. On September 1 we will post a list of candidates for each nomination on the website of the council, and it will already be possible to carry out these public internet consultations. That is, every internet user will have the opportunity to visit the website of the Council, find the relevant nomination, and then he will see the names of the applicants, and he will be able to open a page about any of the candidates and express his support or open another page. A "do not support" button is not needed, because there is a "support" button and therefore he does not support anyone else, because an internet user may vote only once in each category. When he votes, he can also leave a comment. But his comments will only be visible for the members of the Council or, more precisely, the members of the working group. We will not publish them, primarily because there may be some kind of provocation, there may be abuse, slander, so we do not want to open this Pandora's box. At the same time, we will be able to hear the opinions of different people, different users of the internet, so these really will be consultations. And these on-line consultations will last two weeks. After September 15th, my colleagues and I will process the results, the working groups of the Council will express their opinion on the nominees, and I will continue seeking an audience with the head of state to provide him with a list of candidates."
Meanwhile, according to Daniel Dondurei, editor-in-chief of "Cinema Art", "society and, in some sense, the members of our Council, are concerned that the functions of the Council, its possibilities, its prospects will change during this summer, in the context of all of the events that are taking place in the country. Our advice has a very important function associated with the fact that it holds an examination of the authorities' actions on behalf of the public almost every week. I have never seen such a force being a member of countless public agencies and councils of two or three ministries."
