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RUSSIAN POLITICAL ACTIVISTS DOWN ON PUTIN'S GUBERNATORIAL REFORM

MOSCOW, September 13 (RIA Novosti) - Gennadi Zyuganov, Communist Party leader, is dead set against a proposed drastic change in the Russian election legislation.

"The regime has shown once again that it is unable to cope with a normal dialogue even on the State Duma [parliament's lower house]. That is why it is urgently imposing its headlong decisions on this country," he said to the media following an enlarged-attendance federal government session, at which President Putin introduced his reform blueprints.

"This country is in for yet another election reform. Regional diets will be elected in a new way. Meanwhile, nothing serious is being done for the reform to offer us proficient, effective and influential local representative bodies," warned Mr. Zyuganov.

The gubernatorial election reform is unacceptable, says independent MP Vladimir Ryzhkov. "In fact, the Duma has no right to consider this legislative initiative," he pointed out with reference to a federal Constitutional Court verdict of January 18, 1996, concerning the Altai Territory. The court then deemed unconstitutional a number of territorial Statute clauses which envisaged the governor elected by the territorial legislature. As the verdict had it, a governor elected by the diet "shall not qualify as legitimate and independent because neither the legislative authority nor the executive has the right to determine the representative of each other in federal and other bodies", emphasised Mr. Ryzhkov.