Gleb Kuznetsov: "About Parliament and the Constitution"

“The leader of the ruling party is the prime minister, the vast majority of ministers are party members, participants in the party’s governing bodies. The mechanism for the annual report and approval of the prime minister is spelled out. No one is stopping you from approving the prime minister without clear proposals for the cabinet,” writes the political scientist on Facebook , commenting on the ideas of State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.

"That is, our government is a) mostly party, b) responsible to the party c) formally and informally – responsible to parliament. This is a fact. Talk about the fact that this responsibility will flourish better if written down in the Constitution (! ) the public act of approval of the minister N by the collective Milonov - the conversations are strange to say the least.

At any moment, the State Duma can theoretically call the Government to account in many different ways - from a vote of no confidence in the head of government to the “rental” of government bills. To say that the government exists in an “airless space” and is in no way subject to parliamentary influence is to blame it on a healthy head. Pension reform is not a Government “out of control”, it is also parliamentary approval of the Government’s initiative. Now another loud and scandalous government bill, which has received negative reviews in the regions with a potentially huge negative social effect, is being submitted to the State Duma. The bill would reform the country's entire fishing industry in the interests of one major federal player. Will he be rejected? Hardly. Is the Constitution to blame? Does it need to be edited? Or is the problem elsewhere?

The emergence of an opposition Duma (what if?) will inevitably require formal and informal negotiations between the executive and legislative branches and the approval of ministers before being introduced into the House by the Prime Minister. Otherwise the Prime Minister will not appear. Further, see the history of Primakov’s cabinet, for the formation of which no constitutional tricks were needed.

Are we thinking about transit by increasing the “constitutional” weight of parliament and, ultimately, a transition to a parliamentary republic? I came across this version yesterday. The Armenian people and personally Prime Minister Nikol Vovaevich Pashinyan applaud this idea. This is just the anniversary of the events that led them to the Revolution. And what led to the events themselves was that a weak, “sleeping”, as it is fashionable to say, institution was inflated through a straw with powers, hoping that precisely due to its personnel weakness, general unsuitability and lack of country experience of a parliamentary republic, it would become an ideal support for the continuation of power Sargsyan. I didn't.

The initiative to change the Constitution does not answer the main question - why? What problem is being solved? The Parliament has sufficient powers to interact with the government; the reputation of the chamber, to put it mildly, is not higher than the reputation of the government. For absolutely all irritating government initiatives, parliament bears at least equal responsibility (and in my opinion, greater responsibility, because theoretically it has the right to reject an initiative or reform). Increasing the role of the State Duma will not and cannot become a factor in increasing trust in the authorities, even theoretically. This is the reality. Constitutional changes are not the field where the solution to the problem of ratings, trust, stability and confidence in the future is buried.

PS They may tell me that I am pretending that I don’t know how everything really happens. I know. But I will say this: the problem of the discrepancy between the “formal”, “written law” and the informal practices that have historically developed in a given territory cannot be solved by adding even the most correct lines to the “written laws”.