Paul Goble
Staunton,
February 21 – Some Duma members have made such outrageous proposals and
statements that it is no surprise that sometimes news outlets ascribe to them
even more outrageous proposals and statements that they did not in fact make.
Now, Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin proposed something likely to strike many
as outrageous to protect deputies.
He
has announced that the Duma website will now create a special page on which
such statements and proposals will be posted. Such things will only be put up
after consultations with party fractions and the risk of appearing there should
make members of Russia’s lower house more responsible (vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2019/02/21/794764-viskazivaniya-deputatov).
Members won’t want
to be noticed for this by their party comrades, Volodin says, especially if
they are elected on a party list basis and might find themselves dropped from the
list or at least put further down it in the next electoral cycle. Consequently, he suggests, this measure will
increase party discipline and individual responsibility.
But in making the proposal, the
speaker suggested his first interest was in protecting the deputies themselves.
Because some of their proposals are outrageous, many Russians have no trouble
expecting reports of even more outrageous ones that they did not in fact make.
By posting the outrageous, he says, journalists will on notice they can’t
continue to make things up.
Earlier this week, the Duma passed
on first reading a bill that would impose fines up to 5000 rubles (80 US
dollars) for individuals and up to one million rubles (160,000 US dollars) for
institutions that disseminated unreliable information threatening the life and
health of people or public order.
Volodin suggested
that these fines should apply to the owners of media outlets as well. And his latest proposal appears to be in aid
of that idea.
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