Let's take a break from the deputies

You can exhale: the State Duma finished the work as part of the spring session and went on vacation. This means that before the fall, we will neither scare or amuse the headlines in the news feeds: “Deputies suggest prohibiting ...” and further-something like this, from the field of normal human life, to which we are used to and what they want to deprive us of. There will be no violent disputes in social networks about the next Duma initiatives, nor witty jokes, nor frightening demotivators. You can at least some time not think about what parliament we have and what surprises of parliamentarians in reserve. In the end, to relax from the usual sense of shame for what is now called parliament in Russia.

True, the holidays are not a hindrance to the deputies. After the end of the session, Unicorn Vasily Shestakov suggested equalizing the fast food advertisement with alcohol advertising. And there is no doubt - manufacturers of ridiculous and terrible bills will not wait for the autumn session and continue the usual business in the vacation season.

During the reporting period, 861 bills were submitted to the Duma and 278 laws were adopted (in the spring session of 2014-295 laws, 2013-261).

The session will be remembered by the abundance of prohibitive initiatives, testifying to the latitude of the horizons of the people's chosen ones. Banses for the import of Pepsi and Coca-Cola products into the country (“as supporting the actions of the President of the Russian Federation”, of course), small font in contracts, smoking hookahs in public places, demonstration of films from those countries that introduced sanctions against Russia (“directors and producers must be responsible for the activities of their governments”), mutual insults in Social networks are far from complete, but an impressive list of what managed to outraged and excite parliamentarians. Fortunately, these initiatives remained so initiatives.

But, unfortunately, the list of punitive laws that limit the rights and freedoms of various categories of citizens has been replenished. In addition, in line, the bills that have passed the first reading, which are highly likely to be adopted during the autumn session (p. 25). And behind each of these actions - his own beneficiary, his customer, his beneficiary (p. 26).

The deputies themselves were satisfied with the work (p. 34) - after all, they created the legislative framework for the accession of Crimea, defended the country's sovereignty from the encroachments of external and internal enemies, and learned to maintain the president’s fateful initiatives in a single impulse. However, according to the independent deputy Dmitry Gudkov, the majority in the State Duma - including in the United Russia faction - perfectly understand that the laws are voting for the country, but they are ruled by cynicism and fear of losing a place in the sun (p. 36).

The factions are distinguished from each other only by names, discussions - in the past, any vote on a significant issue is absolutely predictable. Parliament is now also a place where no decisions are made. The very phrase "legislative power" in Russia is now deprived of meaning. This is the result of both the spring session and the work of parliamentarians of the sixth convocation as a whole. The Kremlin is both the customer and the only voter for the deputies since the system opposition have refused to fight for the votes stolen from them in the 2011 elections (p. 40). This, by the way, also deprives legislators of an additional source of shadow income: after all, it makes no sense to corrupt people on whom nothing depends on at all (p. 30). But they are ready to put up with this: an alternative - to be thrown out of the system - obviously worse.

But we have a chance to take a break from them.

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