Rossiiskaya Gazeta: "Parliament to work faster"
Lawmakers want guarantees for the Government's anti-crisis plan.
The State Duma has issued another statement of support for the Government's policies designed to mitigate the consequences of the economic downturn.
On Friday the 24th, lawmakers finally passed a resolution on the Cabinet's 2008 report, which had been presented by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on April 6. It apparently took them more than two weeks to figure out that in 2008, the Government needed to "operate in a global recession environment", and thus vow to work faster "on priority bills supporting the Government's anti-crisis efforts planned for 2009" from now on. Only representatives from the United Russia Party in parliament voted for this resolution.
Opposition parties seem to have begun to enjoy themselves. They have achieved a certain level of solidarity on a number of issues. Even liberal democrats make a point of dissociating themselves from the parliamentary majority, abstaining from voting most of the time. Said democrats, however, cite very unusual motives for their actions, which differed from the reasoning offered by the leftist groups.
Communist lawmakers, for example, found the lack of assessment of the Government's performance in the resolution disappointing.
Deputies from the Just Russia parliamentary party are convinced that the lower house should have been more critical of the Government's anti-crisis programme, and should propose its own bills rather than simply approve those sent from the Government House. In general, according to Just Russia member Oksana Dmitriyeva, the Government's "diagnosis" of the causes of the crises needs to be more accurate in order for the problems to be solved more adequately. "What we have is not a financial crisis, but an economic one," added Ms Dmitriyeva.
"The problem is that there is a mental crisis rather than an economic one, which is evidenced by the opposition activists' behaviour," said Natalia Yermakova, member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party. "Instead of joining forces and acting as a well-coordinated team, these parties are competing with each other to try and score more political points."
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was very convincing when he presented his report to parliament, she added. He proved that Russia's economic successes in 2008 helped the country weather the "first wave of the crisis."
"But what is the effect of this resolution?" wondered Sergei Ivanov from the Liberal Democratic Party, who was ready to look for answers between the lines of the 1.5-page document. "OK, Putin spoke, then we asked questions. But where's the outcome?"
The lower house minority voted down yet another draft resolution, this time concerning the interaction between the State Duma and the Government. After President Dmitry Medvedev criticised ministry officials for being too slow to draft subordinate legislation, which is the reason why laws that have been passed fail to go into effect immediately, the United Russia Party decided to accelerate the process by passing an amendment to the house regulations. They suggested that the house should consider bills in their third reading only after the Duma receives information that the relevant draft sub-laws have been submitted to the Government. However, according to the Communists, this new regulation would if anything only slow down the process, because bills would have to wait too long to be read a third and final time.
"We want to try out a sufficiently inflexible procedure to ensure that no law directly affecting the citizens' life be approved by the Duma or signed by the president until there is a clear plan for its application," first deputy speaker Oleg Morozov explained to those still in doubt. "What's wrong with that?" he added.
Morozov said he simply did not understand the opposition's behaviour. "I can't recall one single recent major political initiative suggested by the president or the parliamentary majority that the opposition supported. They vote such bills down under any pretext they can invent, even when an initiative would clearly benefit the opposition in the end," he said, citing as an example three draft laws suggested by the President and adopted in the third and final reading on Friday.
One of them allowed parties that received between 5% and 7% in the Duma elections to have representation in the lower house of parliament. Another initiative had to do with equal access to the media. The third one authorised, under certain conditions, a municipal representative body to replace the head of the local executive body. This is an instrument which allows elected officials to give a no-confidence vote to an executive official who is not using his or her powers effectively, Morozov explained.
"All of these legislative initiatives are aimed to make our political process more democratic, to reform our political system, to give a person more influence on the government and to strengthen civil society institutes. There is no doubt about that," concluded Morozov.
Tamara Shkel
