A blue bucket has become the symbol for a popular revolt against Russian officials whose limousines use a flashing blue light to flout traffic traffic laws with impunity. Picture: WSJ Source: The Australian
April 27, 2010 10:56AM
By Tony Halpin
From: Times Online
THE flashing blue light is a symbol of all that ordinary Russians hate about the powerful elite whose cars break the law with impunity.
As Alexei Dozorov demonstrated to The Times yesterday, however, you can achieve roughly the same effect with a plastic bucket.
VIDEO: Moscow's blue bucket brigade
When Mr Dozorov, who heads the Moscow branch of the Committee to Protect Drivers' Rights, first put a blue child's bucket on the roof of his car he ignited a popular revolt against the arrogance of state officials whose limousines use a flashing blue light, or migalka, to force their way through traffic as they speed between the capital and their country mansions.
Cars with blue lights can ignore speed limits and traffic rules, police cannot stop them and they have been involved in several controversial traffic accidents.
Now the bucket, which resembles a migalka from a distance, has been adopted by other drivers as a mobile protest against the blue-light class. The action threatens to become an embarrassment for President Medvedev, who promised to end "legal nihilism" in Russia.
Mr Dozorov said: "People are fed up with these people getting away with everything while we have no protection either from migalka drivers or corrupt police. Why should we be second-class citizens on the road?"
The Times joined him as he drove around Moscow yesterday in his hatchback with the blue bucket attached to the roof by a magnet. Mr Dozorov exchanged beeps with a 4x4 whose owner had also stuck a blue bucket on the roof.
The authorities have failed to see the funny side, ordering traffic police to crush the bucket protest. But it is not illegal to drive with a bucket on the roof and officers have struggled to find a way to punish drivers.
Police initially accused them of breaching "cargo transportation regulations". Mr Dozorov, 45, carries with him however a court judgment revoking a fine he received after a judge ruled that no offence had been committed.
"Now there's a new trick," he said. "They ask you to remove the bucket and when you refuse they arrest you for disobeying a police order."
Officially, the number of blue-light vehicles on the road is restricted to 964 for Russia's most senior politicians and bureaucrats. The newspaper Vedomosti and a Moscow radio station counted 1,123 after asking readers and listeners to send in photographs.
Russia's traffic police chief has pledged to investigate illegal migalki amid rumours that businessmen have bought the lights from corrupt officers. Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, recently proposed that only the President, the Prime Minister and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church should have them.
"They are under police protection anyway so they never need one. Nobody should have a migalka except the emergency services," Mr Dozorov said. "We should all be equal on the road."
The Times
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