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St. Pete lawmaker slated for speaker
MOSCOW, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The head of St. Petersburg’s legislature is to be nominated for the post of speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, a lawmaker said Wednesday.
Sergei Mironov’s nomination was to be officially submitted Dec. 4, said Sergei Nazarov, deputy chief of the chamber's Federation faction that is allied with President Vladimir Putin.
The ballot to elect the house speaker is scheduled for Dec. 5.
Under the Kremlin-orchestrated reform of the Federation Council in mid-2000, regional chiefs must leave the chamber by January 2002 and appoint representatives in their stead. Incumbent Speaker Yegor Stroyev was due to leave the post no later than Jan. 1, 2002 after he was re-elected governor of central Russia's Oryol region.
Prior to the reform, regional governors and heads of regional legislatures from Russia's 89 federal units were entitled to seats in the 178-person chamber.
Nazarov’s Federation faction controls more than 100 seats in the house and it is apparent Mironov could easily be voted into the speaker's seat.
Nazarov said the decision to put Mironov on the ballot was reached by the lawmakers "without any hints or agreements with the Kremlin."
"We have considered many candidacies, but Mironov's appealed to us more (than the rest)," he said.
Mironov, 48, was elected to the chamber June 13, 2001, and his term in office expires in December 2003, the official RIA Novosti agency added.
Putin's representative in the Federation Council, Vyacheslav Khizhnyakov, said Wednesday the president was informed about Mironov's nomination and had reacted "positively" to the decision.
Besides Mironov, the Federation faction planned to nominate the deputy chief of the chamber's Budget Committee, Valery Goreglyad, for the post of the deputy speaker, Nazarov said.
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