Regional lawmakers voted Tuesday to cancel direct elections in Russia's fourth-largest city in a blow to the opposition mayor as the Kremlin intensifies a crackdown on dissent.
Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman has been the only top regional official to publicly voice criticism of Putin, elected for a fourth Kremlin term last month.
The regional legislature in the Urals city of nearly 1.5 million people voted to scrap direct mayoral elections despite protests by several thousand people on Monday.
The new mayor will be elected by city lawmakers.
Yekaterinburg until now has been one of several large Russian cities with direct mayoral elections.
Roizman -- who was elected in 2013 for five years and openly supports opposition leader Alexei Navalny -- said the cancellation of direct polls was a "direct offence to residents of Yekaterinburg".
"The bill is very half-baked," he told Echo of Moscow radio station. "But it was bound to sail through, therefore it was so brazen."
He said he was certain that he would not be considered for the post again and added that he himself had no plans to run for a new term, implying however that he would remain active in politics.
"The word 'give up' does not belong in our vocabulary," tweeted Roizman, who is an active blogger and has more than 630,000 followers on Twitter.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin could "neither interfere nor comment".
"This is the absolute right of the local legislative assembly," he told reporters.
According to a survey by Yekaterinburg-based pollster Sotsium released last week, 62 percent of respondents did not support the measure.
- Odd man out -
Roizman, a tough-minded, free-wheeling 55-year-old, has become a popular figure in Russia's opposition circles, attending protests and urging ordinary people to participate in local politics.
Roizman has also made himself unusually accessible to his constituents, regularly receiving the city's neediest people such as the elderly and orphans to help them solve their everyday problems.
He first shot to prominence as founder of a foundation called City Without Drugs and a drug rehab centre in Yekaterinburg to fight Russia's severe narcotics epidemic.
Human rights activists have questioned the centre's methods, which included handcuffing addicts to their beds and forcing heroin addicts to go cold turkey.
Its supporters however have reported a significant drop in drug-related deaths since the foundation was set up in the late 1990s.
Roizman then channelled his energies into politics, beating a Kremlin-friendly candidate in a mayoral election in 2013.
In one of his most recent posts, he slammed the re-election of Putin for a fourth Kremlin term.
"Life will become even worse but the turnout will grow even larger with every new election, the president's approval ratings will be even higher and we'll be even closer to North Korea," he wrote on Facebook.
Since first being elected as president in 2000, Putin has stamped his total authority on Russia, crushing opposition and muzzling independent media.
Gubernatorial elections were scrapped in 2004 under the pretext of the fight against terror, after the Beslan school massacre that claimed more than 330 lives, more than half of them children.
Regional lawmakers voted Tuesday to cancel direct elections in Russia’s fourth-largest city in a blow to the opposition mayor as the Kremlin intensifies a crackdown on dissent.
Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman has been the only top regional official to publicly voice criticism of Putin, elected for a fourth Kremlin term last month.
The regional legislature in the Urals city of nearly 1.5 million people voted to scrap direct mayoral elections despite protests by several thousand people on Monday.
The new mayor will be elected by city lawmakers.
Yekaterinburg until now has been one of several large Russian cities with direct mayoral elections.
Roizman — who was elected in 2013 for five years and openly supports opposition leader Alexei Navalny — said the cancellation of direct polls was a “direct offence to residents of Yekaterinburg”.
“The bill is very half-baked,” he told Echo of Moscow radio station. “But it was bound to sail through, therefore it was so brazen.”
He said he was certain that he would not be considered for the post again and added that he himself had no plans to run for a new term, implying however that he would remain active in politics.
“The word ‘give up’ does not belong in our vocabulary,” tweeted Roizman, who is an active blogger and has more than 630,000 followers on Twitter.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin could “neither interfere nor comment”.
“This is the absolute right of the local legislative assembly,” he told reporters.
According to a survey by Yekaterinburg-based pollster Sotsium released last week, 62 percent of respondents did not support the measure.
– Odd man out –
Roizman, a tough-minded, free-wheeling 55-year-old, has become a popular figure in Russia’s opposition circles, attending protests and urging ordinary people to participate in local politics.
Roizman has also made himself unusually accessible to his constituents, regularly receiving the city’s neediest people such as the elderly and orphans to help them solve their everyday problems.
He first shot to prominence as founder of a foundation called City Without Drugs and a drug rehab centre in Yekaterinburg to fight Russia’s severe narcotics epidemic.
Human rights activists have questioned the centre’s methods, which included handcuffing addicts to their beds and forcing heroin addicts to go cold turkey.
Its supporters however have reported a significant drop in drug-related deaths since the foundation was set up in the late 1990s.
Roizman then channelled his energies into politics, beating a Kremlin-friendly candidate in a mayoral election in 2013.
In one of his most recent posts, he slammed the re-election of Putin for a fourth Kremlin term.
“Life will become even worse but the turnout will grow even larger with every new election, the president’s approval ratings will be even higher and we’ll be even closer to North Korea,” he wrote on Facebook.
Since first being elected as president in 2000, Putin has stamped his total authority on Russia, crushing opposition and muzzling independent media.
Gubernatorial elections were scrapped in 2004 under the pretext of the fight against terror, after the Beslan school massacre that claimed more than 330 lives, more than half of them children.
