Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 1 – A new law,
pushed by United Russia, allows deputies in regional parliaments to operate
their own businesses even while serving in the legislatures, distances them
even further from the population and makes them even less representative of the
population and more part of the power vertical than before.
Olga Slabada of Svobodnaya pressa
spoke with people in three Russian oblasts (Vladimir, Voronezh, and Ryazan), all
of whom suggested that this law by itself will have “significant negative
consequences” for the way in which local parliaments will operate (svpressa.ru/politic/article/255996/).
Many regional politicians are concerned
about how the law will be applied with most convinced that new legislation will
be necessary to ensure that no deputy is working full time for a business. And
some are worried that such activities will be used to dissolve the parliaments
because so many deputies will take advantage of that.
But cooler heads say, Slabada
reports, that since most regional parliaments are elected on a party list
basis, if one representative is ousted, he or she will simply be replaced by
the next person down on the list. More
seriously, however, if deputies have yet more outside income, they will be even
less responsive to the voters.
Instead of seeing the voters as the
source of their income and thus listening to them, the journalist suggests, the
deputies will see businesses as being the primary basis of their wealth – and will
defer to higher level authorities who have powers over businesses than ordinary
citizens typically do not.
While Slabada does not say so, her report
indicates that the leverage the Kremlin already exercises over deputies in the
State Duma is being extended in this way to the regional parliaments, creating a
separate caste of deputies dependent on the approval of the powers that be rather
than on the people who nominally elected them.
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