Moscow, 29 June: The State Duma has rejected the amendment to electoral legislation, which, in the view of many experts, would have given the president of the Russian Federation an opportunity to be elected for a third term.

An Interfax correspondent reports that only 32 deputies voted in favour of this amendment, while at least 226 votes were required for it to pass. Thus the amendment put forward by deputy Aleksandr Moskalets (One Russia faction) was turned down.

A proposal to turn down this amendment was put forward by the chairman of the State Duma constitutional legislation and state construction committee, Vladimir Pligin, and deputy speaker from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction, Valentin Kuptsov.

According to Pligin, "this legislative norm needs additional development in terms of legal technique".

Kuptsov, for his part, said that "a major discussion has opened around this amendment both in the State Duma itself and also in the mass media".

Kuptsov noted that this amendment, if adopted, would create a possibility that the current president could run for a third term under certain circumstances.

"One must not allow even the smallest possibility of this, be it direct or indirect," he stressed, noting that the faction of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation insisted on rejecting this amendment.

The rejected amendment envisaged the introduction of changes and additions to subsections 4 and 6 of Article 32 of the current law "On guarantees of electoral rights of citizens of the Russian Federation and the rights of citizens to take part in referenda".

Its essence is in the interpretation of the circumstances of unscheduled elections of heads of the executive at the regional and federal level.

In cases when the head of the executive at a regional or federal level resigns before the end of his term, this would serve as a reason for holding unscheduled elections. If these elections are deemed to be invalid (for example because of the low turnout of voters or because the majority of them voted against all candidates), repeat unscheduled elections would be declared.

However, the repeat elections would be declared on totally different grounds (the first unscheduled election were deemed invalid - Interfax). Thus the head of the executive who resigned before the end of his term would have an opportunity to run again for this post as if for the first time, not taking into the account the two terms he had worked on that post previously.