Translated material
Revolution from below
The State Duma has launched the procedure for transferring the Federation Council under the control of United Russia
The lower house has taken on the actual reduction of the powers of the chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Sergei Mironov. Yesterday, the State Duma adopted in the first reading and as a basis a bill according to which newly appointed members of the Federation Council will automatically begin to perform their duties within ten days. “It’s a completely acceptable time - (the senator - Ed. ) can prepare his things and come to Moscow," State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said yesterday, commenting on the bill.According to the current procedure, after the approval of a senator by the region, it is still necessary to wait for his powers to be confirmed at a meeting of the Federation Council. According to many analysts, this gave Sergei Mironov the opportunity to exert some influence on the selection of colleagues in the chamber. However, after the adoption of the new rules, the speaker of the Senate will lose these levers of influence, which, of course, he does not like. And he has already expressed his readiness to actively prevent this. “If the bill comes to our chamber in the form in which it is now, then I personally will vote against it and will urge my colleagues to do so,” Mr. Mironov said, commenting on the appearance of the bill last week.
The conflict between the chairman of the upper house and the majority in the lower house is clearly partisan. The authors of the “anti-Mironov” bill are United Russia Duma members, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building Vladimir Pligin and first deputy chairman of this committee Alexander Moskalets. And the speaker of the Federation Council is also the leader of A Just Russia, which in the latest regional elections is increasingly positioning itself as the number two party on the Russian political scene, trying to push the Communist Party of the Russian Federation out of this place. One of the trump cards of the “Socialist Revolutionaries” in the struggle for these positions is the position of the party led by the third person in the state, which is Sergei Mironov.
A mini-fraction of 15 representatives of A Just Russia has actually formed in the Federation Council, unofficial, of course, because Article 3 of Chapter 1 of the Federation Council regulations directly prohibits the creation of party associations.
In February of this year, United Russia members already tried to raise the issue of changing this provision of the regulations, but the matter ended in nothing (see Vremya Novostey of February 8) . However, at the height of this conflict, Vladimir Pligin asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to check the legality of the actions of Sergei Mironov, who, according to United Russia, was delaying the appointment of senators.
There are objectively cases of “delaying” - for example, to this day, the senator from the Nizhny Novgorod region, deputy plenipotentiary representative in the Volga region Valery Shnyakin, whom the regional legislative assembly delegated to Bolshaya Dmitrovka on August 26, has not been given powers until five minutes later. The root of the problem, analysts suggest, is that Mr. Shnyakin will replace Alexander Podlesov, the former head of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of A Just Russia, who is considered a close ally of Sergei Mironov.
Now the “bears” seem to have finally decided to use the topic of delaying appointments in order to take the Federation Council under party control - if not through the creation of factions, then from below, through the appointment of senators. Governors, with rare exceptions, are nominated by United Russia, regional parliaments are also controlled by the party in power - after the adoption of the new bill, the “bears” will be able to completely freely elect candidates for senators that are acceptable to the party.
In any case, this will not affect the controllability of the upper chamber - in its current form, the Federation Council has not rejected a single significant bill that has passed the crucible of the State Duma. However, for United Russia itself, this matters in terms of the political weight of the party and the distribution of posts.
Sergei Mironov, criticizing the proposed norms, has already called the bill “legally illiterate.” In particular, the speaker recalls that since January 1, 2011, senators are appointed from deputies of regional legislative assemblies and parliaments of municipalities. “But a municipal deputy can have dual citizenship, but a senator cannot,” notes Mr. Mironov. “If we accept the amendment of Pligin and Moskalets, then who will check it?”
The last word in the party-apparatus conflict between the two chambers belongs to the president, who will receive the finished bill for signature. Even earlier, it will be accepted by the Federation Council. Practical experience of recent years suggests that passage through the Senate is guaranteed.
Deputy General Director of the Center for Political Technologies Alexey Makarkin believes that the new law should be considered precisely “in the context of the confrontation between United Russia and A Just Russia.” The expert recalls that in the February battle, United Russia even raised the question of removing Sergei Mironov from the post of Speaker of the Federation Council, and now they have limited themselves to de facto narrowing the circle of his powers. “But this is unlikely to deal a big blow to the party,” Mr. Makarkin told a Vremya Novostey correspondent. “Mironov’s influence on the composition of the Federation Council will, of course, be weakened, but for the Socialist-Revolutionaries the main thing is that he will remain the third leader of the state.”