03.11.2018, Yaroslavl.
The Russian Pension Fund should be disbanded, and pensions should be cancelled, wrote Dmitry Petrovsky, a Yaroslavl city council deputy from the United Russia party, on November 2 on his Facebook page.
“Personally, I support the getting rid the concept of a pension age and getting rid of the Pension Fund as an institution,” the deputy wrote. He noted that he believes that citizens should individually decide how long to work and how to find livelihood after retiring. Only disability pensions should remain, said Petrovsky.
In an interview to a REGNUM news agency correspondent, he was asked, how would the people making low wages survive without pensions, as they do not have the opportunity to save funds. The deputy replied, “As a scientist, I understand what natural selection is.” He stressed that the state is not obliged to provide for citizens who stand on “the lowest tier of the intellectual hierarchy and cannot secure a high income.”
Petrovsky noted that he will make a deputy’s request based on his proposal to discuss the idea on local and regional levels.
Questions of pension security became one of the most widely discussed social topics after the government introduced a bill to raise the retirement age.
Numerous protests against the initiative have taken place across Russia. The President was given more than a million signatures under a petition not to sign the bill and for the government to resign. Despite of this, the retirement age was raised in the beginning of October.
Sergey Kurginyan, the leader of the Essence of Time movement, which initiated the petition, said that even though the bill has been approved, the struggle against the pension reform must continue regardless. One of the next steps is the protest rally “Defend the social victories of October – ‘No’ to the pension reform” which is scheduled to take place in Moscow on November 5.
Editorial Comment
The call to cancel the pensions contradicts the Constitution of Russia, as it declares the country is a “social state.” The deputy’s next statement that citizens who are incapable of earning enough for a comfortable retirement belong to the “lowest tiers of the intellectual hierarchy”, is on the verge of social Nazism. The civil society must make every effort so that a deputy who says this is never elected again to any institution.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
