Translated material
Working with documents
The Federation Council has the right not to approve new senators for as long as desired
For the third month now, the Federation Council has been unable to approve a representative from the executive branch of the Ulyanovsk region - the president of the SOK group of companies, Rustem Shiyanov. By law, senators cannot reject a candidate from the region. But some representatives of the federal subjects never became senators.On February 17, 2005, the legislative assembly of the Ulyanovsk region approved the deputy general director of the Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant, president of the SOK group of companies, Rustem Shiyanov, as the representative of the head of the region in the Senate. He was supposed to replace General Alexander Kalita, delegated to the upper house by the former governor Vladimir Shamanov. However, the Senate has still not confirmed the powers of Mr. Shiyanov, which is why Governor Sergei Morozov has been left without a representative in the upper house for more than three months.
In accordance with the law on the procedure for forming the Federation Council, senators must approve any candidate proposed by the region. Since the passage of a new law in 2000, when governors were removed from the Senate, the upper house has become both an honorary political exile and a representative of financial and industrial groups. Some members of the chamber began to be indignant when the ranks of senators were suddenly filled with people with criminal records and who did not have a very good understanding of the location of their region. The Federation Council Commission on Rules explained to senators that it is not their responsibility to closely examine the proposed candidates. And the procedure for approving a new senator is a simple formality.
Nevertheless, amendments to the law gave the chairman of the Federation Council the right to expel senators. True, the chairman does not have clear legal grounds for this. The commission on regulations of Vremya Novostey reported: what this will look like technologically is unknown, since there were no precedents, and the law does not describe the procedure. On the other hand, the chamber staff believes that the right to recall senators gives the head of the Federation Council the right to “be more attentive to those candidates represented by the subjects.”
There is no deadline for consideration of the candidacy of a new senator. So Mr. Shiyanov may not be invited to the Federation Council for a long time. Moreover, no one can explain the reasons for such a delay - neither in the Ulyanovsk region, nor in the upper house of parliament. True, Sergei Mironov recently hinted at the unpatriotic behavior of the Ulyanovsk authorities. He fundamentally spoke out against the subjects sending “Varangians” to the Federation Council - people who are not directly related to the regions.
Thus, the head of the SOK group can add to the list of senators who never made it to the Federation Council. In April, the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Right Forces, Grigory Tomchin, was not accepted into the Federation Council. According to the failed senator, Speaker Mironov personally did not like him. Grigory Tomchin was elected as a representative from the Chita Regional Duma on December 16, 2004, and since then he has been waiting in vain for his approval at the next meeting of the Federation Council. Four months later, Chita deputies suddenly reversed their own decision under the pretext that Mr. Tomchin had not provided them with a certificate of his income. True, before this, at the end of March, Sergei Mironov said that he did not approve of the choice of legislators of the Chita region: “It’s strange to me why deputies consider it possible to delegate some Varangian to the Federation Council, and not their own deputy.”
In 2003, the head of the Yukos-Moscow company, Vasily Shakhnovsky, was elected representative from Evenkia. The Prosecutor General's Office protested the election of Mr. Shakhnovsky, arguing that the vote was held in violation of the law. Then the head of YUKOS-Moscow was accused of non-payment of taxes amounting to 29 million rubles. The court upheld the protest of the prosecutor's office, and two weeks later Vasily Shakhnovsky wrote a statement about the early termination of his senatorial powers.
A year earlier, the Federation Council could not approve for a long time the candidacy from the parliament of the Leningrad region - Alfred Koch. Mr. Kokh’s competitor in the regional elections, deputy Oleg Petrov, demanded through the court to suspend the approval of his candidacy as a representative of the regional legislative assembly. And although Sergei Mironov expressed hope that Mr. Kokh’s experience would be “positively implemented within the walls of the Federation Council,” the chairman of the board of directors of the investment company Montes Auri, without waiting for the court’s decision, changed his mind about becoming a senator and withdrew his documents.
In November 2001, the People's Khural of Buryatia canceled its own resolution appointing former Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov as the republic's representative in the Federation Council, after the local prosecutor's office declared the vote illegal. The former prosecutor general spoke about pressure from the presidential administration, which “did not accept the election results, it was dissatisfied with the decision of the khural deputies and used a number of levers in order to reconsider the situation.” According to Yuri Skuratov, serious pressure was also put on the President of Buryatia, who, in turn, tried to put pressure on the Khural deputies.
With great difficulty, a representative of the Penza region, former Deputy Minister of Finance Andrei Vavilov, was approved in the Federation Council. Sergei Mironov stated that the appearance in the chamber as new senators of people “connected with certain scandals will in no way affect the authority of the Federation Council.” In 2000, a criminal case was opened against Andrei Vavilov. The Prosecutor General's Office accused him of exceeding his official powers while he was Deputy Minister of Finance. But Mr. Vavilov was still approved in the upper house.
To avoid unpleasant encounters in the Senate corridors, chamber leadership is now trying to stop the movement of some potential senators in the early stages. These attempts are facilitated by flexible legislation, as well as the desire of the regions to have at least some representative in the Federation Council.