A number of public figures have left the President’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights, according to Kommersant.
Journalist Leonid Radzikhovsky, president of the Social Contract National Project Institute, Alexander Auzan, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Alexei Simonov, Director of the Independent Institute of Social Policy, Tatiana Maleva, and director of the Center for Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies, Emil Pain, have left the council.
They follow in the wake of those who have already publicly stated their unwillingness to work with Vladimir Putin, with a number of prominent public figures leaving the council before the inauguration of Vladimir Putin.
Elena Panfilova, director of the Russian branch of Transparency International, and political analyst, Dmitry Oreshkin, indicated their intentions to leave the council. “I am dissatisfied with my productivity. I am unhappy that the government is not interested in the issue related to what I do, namely, the violation of electoral rights,” Oreshkin said, adding that he did not want to work with a president with legitimacy that he considered questionable.
According to Kommersant, Yuri Dzhibladze, president of Russian Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, may leave the council in the near future.
In December 2011 journalist Svetlana Sorokina and human rights activist Irina Yassina left the council due to alleged electoral fraud.
This means that a quarter of council’s members have left over recent months (the council consists of up to 40 people). Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the council, said that he personally would vacate his position if more than 20 members of the council leave, but added that candidates to replace those who have left would be determined in the near future, after he was reappointed on May 26.