Sixty-six percent of Russian citizens believe their country's constitution should be revised, a fresh poll conducted by the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) revealed on Friday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2018) Sixty-six percent of Russian citizens believe their country's constitution should be revised, a fresh poll conducted by the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) revealed on Friday.
In December 2013, just 44 percent of Russians held this opinion, the pollster noted. The share of respondents opposing any changes to the country's basic law fell to 20 percent from 25 percent in 2013, while the proportion of those who were unable to give a definitive opinion on the matter dropped to 14 percent from 31 percent five years ago.
Asked about whether or not the constitution's provisions were being violated, 69 percent of respondents believed they were. Specifically, 46 percent said that such violations happened often, while 23 percent felt that this happened rarely, compared to 52 percent and 8 percent, respectively, in the 2013 poll.
Asked whether the constitution should be reviewed periodically or in exceptional cases, 54 percent of respondents supported the former approach and 34 percent backed the latter.
The poll was conducted on October 20-21 among 1,500 respondents in 104 settlements of 53 Russian regions among 1,500 respondents. The margin of error does not exceed 3.6 percent.
Earlier in October, Russian Constitutional Court chair Valery Zorkin complained in his interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily about the blurred line between presidential and government powers, the unclear division of the powers of the central government and regional authorities, as well as the lack of clarify on the status of the presidential administration and the prosecutor general's office. Zorkin emphasized the need for targeted changes to the constitution. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied rumors that work was underway to amend the country's basic law, saying that Zorkin's opinion was his own.
