Marina Ozerova
Encroachment on the sacred cow and a carrot for small parties
Being the true lawyer that he is, President Dmitry Medvedev likes to itemize everything, even in his oral speech. He divided political reform in his Address into ten "items", ranging from amendments to the Constitution to the rotation of party leaders.
President Medvedev will go down in Russian history as the only President who dared touch the "sacred cow", the 1993 Constitution, in the last 15 years. Although the first amendment he proposed would make it mandatory for the Government to report to the State Duma every year, it is no secret that the purpose of the whole exercise was to increase the presidential term from four years to six. Such a change would require an amendment of part 1, Article 81 of the Main Law. Nothing has been said about repealing the two-term restriction, which means that a Russian citizen can remain the head of state for a straight 12 years, 50% longer than today.
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BACKGROUND
WHO PROPOSED CHANGING THE PRESIDENCY
The man who made the most frequent proposals to increase the presidential term was Sergei Mironov, the Speaker of the Federation Council. He advocated prolonging the presidential term from four years to five-seven years before, during and immediately after the Duma and Presidential elections. At one time, the leader of Just Russia began to cast a jealous eye on his counterpart at United Russia, but Boris Gryzlov, who is at least as loyal to the incumbent on the issue of a long presidential term, is more careful and was not in a hurry to introduce such initiatives.
In June of last year, the then-President Vladimir Putin remarked that "four years is a fairly short time, and five, six or seven years is quite acceptable for Russia today, but the number of terms still has to be limited". Notwithstanding that remark, the number of those wishing to see the presidential term increased or prolonged shot up. The State Duma, in turn, turned down an amendment tabled by the deputies from the Ivanovo Region (the LDPR and Rodina were the only parliamentary parties to back the proposal). Incidentally, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky also proposed a nationwide referendum to amend the Constitution and extend the presidential term to 7 years, but Vladimir Putin insisted that he was not going to amend the Constitution in order to stay for a third term.
True, the day after the Duma elections early in the year he said it would not be a bad idea to separate the parliamentary and presidential elections in time, but how to go about it? First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov hit the nail on the head this time around: "by extending the President's term". It should be noted, however, that after his former colleague Dmitry Medvedev became head of state, talk about the number of terms and their duration faded somewhat.
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The gift to the State Duma deputies was less generous: the term of each parliament would be increased from four to five years. The consolation that the Government would make annual reports to the Duma (as part of increased parliamentary supervision) is unlikely to make much difference given the current configuration of power.
First, there is nothing to prevent the Government from coming to the State Duma and reporting on its work today. Such reports were practiced even under Yeltsin, when the Prime Minister was not the leader of the parliamentary majority party. Second, a parliamentary inquiry is a much more potent mechanism of parliamentary control. The only amendment on that theme, adopted by the deputies after the first reading, has been pending in the State Duma since the 1990s.
If the constitutional amendments announced by Dmitry Medvedev are to be implemented, they should be put in the form of a bill and introduced in parliament. In order to pass, a bill requires two-thirds of the votes in the lower house, three-quarters in the upper house and approval by two-thirds of the federal regions. All the signs indicate that the amendments will come into force at the start of the next electoral cycle: in 2011 for the State Duma and 2012 for the President. To avoid being accused of self-serving interests, it would have made sense for such a reform to be implemented by an outgoing head of state, but Vladimir Putin did not do it - perhaps because he was not leaving for good and had not ruled out a comeback...
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From MK Dossier
THE COUNTRIES IN WHICH THE PRESIDENTIAL TERM IS MORE THAN FIVE YEARS:
Venezuela, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Finland - 6 years;
Italy, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - 7 years.
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MK reference
HOW MUCH MONEY WILL BE SAVED ON ELECTIONS?
The election of the Russian President in March cost the country 5 billion roubles and the elections of State Duma deputies in December cost one billion less, according to the Central Election Commission financial report. If the President is elected for six instead of four years, it can easily be calculated that, over a period of 12 years there will be two rather than three elections. The net savings in current prices would be 5 billion roubles, money that could build a multi-storey library, a metro station, or fund a full renovation of the Tsarskoye Selo museum-estate. The money could even pay for free perambulators for all Russian children under the age of 2.
The introduction of the five-year term in the State Duma will save 4 billion roubles in current prices over 20 years. If the terms of the president and the deputies are extended, it would result in annual savings of 500 million roubles on federal elections.
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The proclaimed democratisation of the electoral process will only be superifical, as it will not and cannot change the current situation in any significant way.
President Medvedev said that it is not right that the five million voters who voted for the parties that did not win seats in the Duma in 2007 do not have representatives in the legislature. But what will be done to change that? Lowering the ridiculously high 7% barrier for getting into the Duma? No, what is proposed is allocating 1-2 parliamentary seats for parties that win between 5 and 7% of the vote.
By the way, in the 2007 elections none of the six parties that failed to clear the barrier approached even 3%, let alone 5%.
The promised lifting of the requirement to make a money deposit as an alternative to the collection of signatures currently required to get a candidate registered will deprive the opposition non-parliamentary parties of what is their only opportunity to cheat the "administrative resource". Nonetheless, a bill to that effect has been submitted to the Duma by the Perm legislature, on the initiative of United Russia...
The proclaimed phasing down of the number of signatures required to get registered as a candidate in the Duma elections (which is now 100,000) will make little difference if the electoral legislation retains the provisions that allow election commissions to scrutinize the signatures for authenticity, and if the judiciary practice making it impossible for a disqualified party to win its case in a court of law remains in place.
Still, it is refreshing to hear the President speak about and show concern for the parties out of parliament. Here's the rub, however: their numbers continue to shrink with each passing day. Out of the 14 parties registered by the Justice Ministry on September 1, 2008, four sit in the State Duma, while six have either disbanded and merged, under the Kremlin's watchful eye, with larger parliamentary parties or are in the process of transformation.
Perhaps the place of old "dwarf" parties will be taken by new ones? After all, the President has proposed lowering the membership size requirement for parties to be registered. The necessary minimum today is 50,000 members; whether the bar will be lowered by 5,000, 10,000 or by half remains unclear. Nothing has been said about whether or not the current approach to the registration of parties will remain in place, when the Justice Ministry confers party status on organizations that receive a nod from the Kremlin, using all sorts of pretexts to deny registration to the groups that the Kremlin does not need or dislikes.
The parliamentary parties have (for the umpteenth time) been promised access to the Government-controlled media. However, party leaders such as Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky are approaching retirement age, now that Mr Medvedev has proposed a rotation of party bosses. It is still unknown how many years they will be allowed to sit, but perhaps, like the head of state, they will have to leave their posts after serving two six-year terms?
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Dmitry Medvedev drew the line on the argument as to whether election to the Federation Council should be restored. His answer was negative, but his proposed scheme for the recruitment of the upper house of parliament will differ markedly from Putin's. At present the regional executive branch and legislature (the governor and the local parliament) send one representative each to Moscow. What has been proposed is a surrogate election: the regions can be represented only by the local deputies at the regional or municipal level. It is unclear from Dmitry Medvedev's speech whether that applies to the representatives of both the executive and legislative branches or only of the legislature. The number of "carpetbaggers" in the Federation Council will hardly diminish, although bureaucrats, army generals, or former governors will have to cover a longer path before they can settle into a quiet and cozy place. They will first have to get the Kremlin's blessing and then be elected regional deputy as a United Russia candidate.
The procedure of appointing governors will remain practically unchanged. To enhance the role of the parties, the President deems it necessary that those parties that win regional elections should have the exclusive right to nominate candidates for the region's chief executive. However, the final say on these candidates will belong to the President, who will sign the decree appointing them.
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From MK Dossier
At present the leading party and the Governor in the region typically go hand-in-hand. The only exception until recently was the Vladimir Region, where Governor Nikolai Vinogradov was registered as a Communist. He suspended his membership in the KPRF in January, although he has not yet joined United Russia.
Another maverick is the ex-governor of the Stavropol Region Alexander Chernogorov, who botched the elections for the local legislature. As a result, Just Russia became the dominant party in the Stavropol legislature, while the United Russia Governor had to be removed - not to put a Just Russia candidate at the head of the region, but to enable the new regional head to put United Russia in the driver's seat.