Russia's parliament expelled an outspoken opponent of President Vladimir Putin on Friday in a vote which the deputy likened to a Stalinist show trial and said intensified a Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Opposition activists said the ousting of Gennady Gudkov, the first lawmaker to be voted out of the State Duma by peers since 1995, would radicalise demonstrators on the eve of an anti-Putin rally in Moscow.
The opposition lawmaker was expelled over allegations he ran a business while in the lower house, which is illegal. Gudkov denied the charge, but the expulsion deprived him of parliamentary immunity and he could face trial and up to two years in jail. "Everything happening here is a lawless show trial. It is a political vendetta and extrajudicial punishment," Gudkov told the Duma before the vote, as he compared Russia's top prosecutor to one of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's henchmen. The chamber voted 291-150 to oust the 56-year-old former KGB officer with three abstentions.
"I received my mandate from the people, from hundreds of thousands of voters who voted for me, and only they can judge what kind of deputy I am," he said. He also drew comparisons between his accusers in the Duma and the "oprichniki" who carried out repressions under Tsar Ivan The Terrible in 16th-century Russia. Gudkov raised his fist in defiance as he walked out of the chamber after the vote. Wearing a trademark crumpled brown suit, the portly and mustachioed deputy shook hands with allies in the chamber and kissed one woman deputy as he made his way out.
He is a member of the Just Russia party, and was formerly an ally of Putin's United Russia but became an opposition force in the run-up to December's parliamentary election. Gudkov said the allegations against him, over his connections with a construction materials market and security firms, were "a farce" and has circulated a list of pro-Putin members of the chamber he says are guilty of running businesses.
"If they dare to open a criminal case against me and jail me, well, I will accept such fate. But I want to say once again the country has taken a step towards a civil war," he said. But deputy general prosecutor Vladimir Malinovsky told the chamber Gudkov had carried out "entrepreneurial activities" before entering the Duma and had not stopped them when he took up his seat.
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