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Moscow Times
January 12, 2005
Putin's Reforms Duma's Priority
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer
The State Duma, which reconvenes Wednesday after the holiday break, will delve into hundreds of bills, including steps to clamp down on terrorism, moonshine and nudity on television, but it will give priority to President Vladimir Putin's controversial political reforms, Speaker Boris Gryzlov said Tuesday.
No major surprises are expected in the Kremlin-controlled chamber, but that might change if public tension over unpopular social reforms heats up.
Gryzlov said Putin's bills to scrap individual Duma races and to set up a public oversight board, which is intended to boost citizens' participation in government, will be at the top of the agenda in the spring session.
"It is essential to pass the presidential bills to switch to a proportional system of parliamentary elections and to form a public chamber," he said, Interfax reported.
The two bills were approved by the United Russia-dominated Duma in a first reading in December, and need to go through second and third readings before they can be submitted to the Kremlin-friendly Federation Council for its approval, and then to Putin to sign into law.
Western governments and opposition politicians have expressed concern that the elimination of individual races in favor of party-list elections and the recent implementation of a Putin-sponsored law ending gubernatorial elections are a rolling back of democracy. Putin has said the changes are needed to strengthen the state.
The wild card in the Duma's spring session will be whether dissatisfaction continues to grow over the social reforms that it approved last year, political analysts said. Thousands of retirees rallied across the country on Sunday and Monday to protest a law replacing Soviet-era benefits like free public transportation and some free medicines with cash payments. The law, which went into force Jan. 1, also obliges regional authorities to provide some of the cash compensation from their often thin budgets.
"United Russia deputies will not be able to pretend that nothing is going on, even though they will be encouraged to do so," said Andrei Ryabov, political analyst with Carnegie Moscow Center.
He said that if tension builds, the Duma's structure might change as some United Russia deputies break away from the party with the Kremlin's consent.
Communist Deputy Sergei Reshulsky, who coordinates the faction's activities in the Duma, said United Russia would most likely react only by accusing regional leaders of failing to carry out federal law, despite a promise by Gryzlov last month to establish parliamentary control over how federal laws are implemented in the regions.
The Communists intend to suggest the introduction of a moratorium on the benefits law, Reshulsky said.
One of the most criticized pieces of legislation -- a counterterrorism bill that would give security services sweeping new powers to declare a state of emergency if they say they believe there is a "terrorist danger," and that would restrict media coverage of terrorist attacks -- will come up for a second reading on Jan. 21, the agenda-setting Duma Council decided Tuesday.
The bill was drafted by the Federal Security Service, the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General's Office and the Justice Ministry, and was approved in a first reading on Dec. 17. Drawn up in reaction to the Beslan school massacre and other terrorist attacks that killed more than 440 people in August and September, it is widely seen as an attack on civil liberties and an attempt to increase the powers of the siloviki, a group of former and current defense and security officials close to Putin.
A long-debated bill to toughen state control over alcohol sales will be voted on in a second reading Feb. 2, the Duma Council said. The vote had been scheduled for the opening session Wednesday, but the Duma Council decided to delay it so as to toughen penalties for moonshine production in the bill, said Valery Draganov, head of the Duma's Committee on Economic Policy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, Interfax reported.
Other legislation to be considered during the spring session includes a bill to restrict nudity on television and in publications, as well as a bill against corruption.
The Duma may also receive government-drafted legislation to reform public health care, which if passed, would allow some hospitals to be privatized, said Oleg Shein, a deputy with the nationalist Rodina faction and a member of the Labor and Social Policy Committee. "To my knowledge, the bills have been drafted and will be submitted for the Duma's consideration in a month or two," Shein said by telephone.
It was unclear Tuesday exactly how many bills the Duma intends to consider in the spring session, which runs through July.
Gryzlov said the Duma considered a record number of 829 bills last year and passed 228. Of those, 180 were signed into law and have taken effect, he said.
Some opposition deputies, however, criticized the Duma's work last year and expressed pessimism about the new season. "The past year showed that the current Duma is the least competent chamber of all, and that it will continue to operate as a branch of the presidential administration, rubberstamping required legislation," Reshulsky said.
For the first time, the Duma has scheduled all the speakers for its weekly "government hour" before the start of a new session. In the past, the speakers -- usually the prime minister or Cabinet ministers -- have been summoned a week or so before a sitting to report on the issues they oversee. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov will appear first, on Jan. 19, to report on ongoing army reform. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin will appear April 13 to discuss how the new benefits law was implemented in the first quarter.
The last Cabinet members to appear before the Duma in the spring session will be Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov and Science and Education Minister Andrei Fursenko, who have been asked to speak on June 8 and 15, respectively.