| Today the first plenary meeting of the State Duma of the fourth convocation will take place Today the State Duma of the fourth convocation will meet for its first plenary session. It will be not so much working as solemn. Among the working issues, only the formation of the very top is planned - the speaker and his deputies, who form the Duma Council. Leaders of factions and chairmen of committees will no longer be included in this body - this is the first planned innovation proposed by United Russia. Now seats in the Duma Council will be distributed according to the quota principle, that is, the majority of votes will go to the party in power.
No surprises are expected today. After the resignation of Boris Gryzlov from his ministerial post, no one has any doubts about who will become speaker. The appointment of Lyubov Sliska as first vice-speaker is also expected. Another innovation is that now there will be two first vice-speakers. The second candidate for the new post is also known - this is Alexander Zhukov, formerly the head of the Committee on Budget and Taxes (now this position will be occupied by United Russia deputy Vladislav Reznik). There will be several simple vice-speakers. The “quota” principle applies here: each political force that wins the elections has as many vice-speaker rates as the number of votes allowed allows it. That is, if the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and Rodina most likely delegate one representative each to the chamber council, then United Russia will delegate as many as four. Their names are also known: Volodin, Pekhtin, Morozov and Boos.
The Communists will most likely nominate Pyotr Romanov or Ivan Melnikov for the post of vice-speaker. The Rodina bloc is going to nominate Dmitry Rogozin, and the LDPR, as in the Duma of the previous convocation, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
The Duma members will begin distributing committees in the near future. Most likely, leading positions in all committees will go to United Russia, despite the fact that Rodina and the Liberal Democratic Party are also not averse to taking part in the division. In particular, the “Rodino” members would like to receive the posts of chairmen of the committees on defense, credit organizations and financial markets, and liberal democrats would be happy to head the committees on information policy, health care and sports, as well as culture and tourism. In contrast, the Communists skeptically abandoned their claims to the posts of heads of committees.
It is expected that the number of committees will remain the same as in the previous Duma. The Duma committees will find new owners somewhere between January 12 and 16, and legislators will get around to actually making laws no earlier than January 23. By this time, the Kremlin will send its proposals for priority laws and amendments. They have already been outlined in general terms during a working meeting between Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Kasyanov. These will be amendments to the Budget and Tax Codes of the Russian Federation, arising from the adopted laws, which were once introduced to the State Duma by the head of state. Ksenia VERETENNIKOVA |
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