Paul Goble
Staunton,
October 13 – As the vote on the pension reform plan showed, the members of the
Duma “are powerless before the government and the president,” Elena Zemskova
says; but they Duma leaders and individual members “want to be influential” so
they are shifting their attentions in directions where they think they can be
that.
Over
the last two years, the journalist who covers the Russian legislature for
Rosbalt says, they have developed to an unprecedented degree their activities “in
the international direction” or what they call “’interparliamentary diplomacy,’”
allowing them to travel and to host visitors from abroad (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/10/13/1738781.html).
“The deputies say,” Zemskova says, “that
active contacts with foreign countries have only one goal, to demonstrate to ‘the
enemies beyond the ocean’ that they have not been able to drive Russia into international
isolation and transform it into an outcast country.” To that end, they travel
to countries that will receive them and receive representatives of the same.
Unfortunately, these countries are
seldom those of the first world that the deputies would like to interact with,
the journalist continues. And they would like to do something about this. To
that end, they are pushing for some kind of Eurasian Parliamentary Assembly
that could “become an alternative to PACE.”
As a result, she says, ever more
Duma deputies oppose Russia’s returning to the Council of Europe and are
adopting ever more nationalistic and xenophobic positions in the belief that if
Russia doesn’t agree to go back, then the Duma will have a better chance to
form the assembly it hopes to have and control.
It is far from clear, Zemskova says,
whether the Kremlin and the foreign ministry will see things that way or
instead decide to impose tighter controls on the deputies even in this area.
But at the very least, the deputies’ aspirations to have some influence somewhere
explain why they are talking the way they are now.
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