Putin Signs Decree to Put Constitutional Reforms Into Effect

President Vladimir Putin today signed a decree to implement the constitutional reform package starting tomorrow, backed in a recent referendum by 77.92 percent of participating voters.

Putin’s provision indicates that the 1993 Constitution, renewed with dozens of modifications, must be officially published this Saturday, after its approval in a plebiscite, attended by 67.97 percent of the more than 108 million 648 thousand registered voters.

In the popular consultation, which ran from June 25 to July 1, considered the main day of voting, about 58 million of the participants at the polls supported the changes and about 16 million voted against, that is, 21.27 percent.

Of the 85 Russian regions, only in the Nenetsk Autonomous District the population did not vote overwhelmingly in favor of the reforms.

The authorities explain that the little more than 44 thousand inhabitants of that northern territory were able to exercise a protest vote to show their opposition to the unification plans with the adjoining Arjanguelsk province, both near the Arctic Circle.

But the support of almost 78 percent to Putin’s proposal to bring to referendum the amendments to the Magna Carta, 11 of which the president outlined last January before the two chambers of the Federal Assembly, is considered an approval to the management of that statesman.

Putin himself thanked yesterday the vote of confidence of the citizens to the management of the state, which had to do, in the opinion of analysts, with the urgent measures applied by the Government to face the Covid-19 pandemic and reduce its damage economic.

Several of the decisions applied since the confinement, started at the end of last March, in fact put into practice some of the proposals put forward by the population and specialists between February and March, during the process of discussing the aforementioned changes.

This included help for families with children and income near the poverty line, financial support for families with minors or help for couples with children where one of the parents was unemployed, among others.

In addition, the construction by the Defense Ministry teams of 17 hospitals in just three months, to serve Covid-19 patients, also, as Putin claimed, greased a new decision-making mechanism that can accelerate the national ‘Health’ project.