The games are over

The threat of dissolution hangs over the Parliament of Tatarstan

The campaign to bring regional legislation into line with federal legislation has reached a new stage. The first court decisions have appeared, the failure of which may lead to the dissolution of regional parliaments by the president. Thus, the Supreme Court of Yakutia found about half of the articles of the republic’s constitution to be contrary to federal laws.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Russia satisfied the private protest of Deputy Prosecutor General for the Volga District Alexander Zvyagintsev against the refusal of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan to consider his claim to recognize 42 articles of the Tatar constitution as contrary to federal legislation. The Tatar court motivated its refusal by the fact that it did not have the right to consider such a case. The Russian Supreme Court decided differently: the case was returned to the Tatar judges, who will now have to compare their basic law with the federal one. A good half of their work was done last summer by the Constitutional Court: checking the constitution of the Altai Republic, the Constitutional Court ruled that the subjects of the Russian There is no federation and there cannot be. So, at least on these positions, the decision of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan is a foregone conclusion.

Events unfolded according to the same scenario in Mordovia, where the republic’s Supreme Court will soon consider the claim of the prosecutor’s office. Here, however, we are not talking about sovereignty, but about the rules of organization of legislative and executive authorities.

If the parliaments of the republics, where there are constitutions that contradict federal legislation, persist in their reluctance to correct them further, the prospect of their dissolution by the president will become quite real.

Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Volga region Sergei Kiriyenko recently addressed the Constitutional Court with a request to clarify when and what kind of responsibility arises in the event of failure to comply with last year’s decision of the Constitutional Court on the Altai Constitution. In their response, the constitutional judges said that according to Putin’s law “On the General Principles of Organization of Legislative and Executive Bodies of State Power of the Subjects of the Russian Federation,” adopted last summer, the president, six months after the adoption of a court decision, can send his first (also last) warning to the regional parliament. And after another three, turn to the State Duma with a proposal to adopt a law on the dissolution of persistent violators, and this law should be considered within two months. Following the logic of the Constitutional Court, a decision of regional courts is not even required to begin the dissolution procedure.

And this should seriously alert the parliamentarians of Bashkiria, where, although there is no prosecutor’s claim in court, the process of bringing the constitution into line with federal legislation is seriously stalled. Meanwhile, Bashkiria, along with Tataria, are the only republics of the district that have not renounced their sovereignty.

Svetlana MIKHAILOVA