| To the sounds of the national anthem followed by a minute's
silence, the State Duma of the 1999 convocation opened its last session.
Commemorating their deceased colleagues, the deputies seemed to forget
their plans concerning Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Anatoly Chubais.
The session opened on Tuesday, not on Wednesday, as usual, as in the
run-up to the parliamentary elections the lower house will hold its plenary
sessions not two but three times a week: on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays,
to enable the deputies to take two weeks of leave before the election
day and meet with their voters in the regions. However, this week the
regime is not so strict.
As the chairman of the State Duma Gennady Seleznyov explained on Monday,
the parliamentarians have yet to adapt to work after a lengthy break.
However, the lawmakers still have little to keep them occupied, as few
bills have been submitted to the house, he said.
However, it is hard to believe that there are no bills for the deputies
to consider. Clearly communist party member Alevtina Aparina did not hold
this view, wondering indignantly: ''Why don't we work tomorrow, when many
bills are lying unconsidered?'. In a bid to calm her, fellow-communist,
Svetlana Goryacheva, replied: ''What are you so worried about? We will
review all your bills in October.''
In actual fact the agenda of the Tuesday plenary session consisted of
23 issues, including bills on the lottery and the gambling business. On
the first day of the autumn session the deputies were to review amendments
to the law on political parties, proposed by SPS members Alexander Barannikov
and Andrei Vulf. The authors of the bill called on teenagers to be allowed
to take part in political life and in particular to vote at parliamentary
elections.
To begin with, the lawmakers approved the plan for the Duma's work in
September and subsequent months. The last September session will be held
on September 19 and will be almost entirely dedicated to examining the
draft 2004 budget.
As well as the budget, in September the deputies plan to adopt amendments
to legislation on compulsory military service, exempting from military
duty law enforcement officers who have not yet served in the army, the
only sons of the disabled and sons whose fathers were killed while carrying
out their official duties in law enforcement agencies.
Although the centrists had threatened to punish Vladimir Zhirinovsky
for trying to push speaker Gennady Seleznyov off the rostrum at the last
session before the summer break, on Tuesday none of them seemed to remember
the incident. After listening to the anthem and the speaker's greeting,
the deputies observed a minute of silence in memory of their deceased
colleagues Yuri Shchekochikhin
and Yuri Ten who died this summer, and proceeded to routine work.
A day earlier, however, many of them made some spectacular statements,
suggesting that they planned to turn the first autumn session into a bit
of a show. For instance, the centrist People's Deputy Group said it would
demand Anatoly Chubais's dismissal from the post of chief executive of
the country's power company, UES and promised abolition of the law on
compulsory third-party liability for motorists.
The Communists, for their part, said they had drawn up a new address
to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov urging him to revise Russia's privatization
results. Yabloko activists, too, have prepared their variant of an address
to the prime minister. Deputy Sergei
Mitrokhin says his colleagues should invite Kasyanov to the State
Duma to report on the country's preparedness for the winter season.
''In a democratic country where there is no dictator, the prime minister
is not responsible for stoke-holes, in a democratic country there is a
demarcation of responsibilities,'' retorted LDPR faction member Alexei
Mitrofanov, and most deputies rejected Yabloko's proposal.
And when someone else hinted that it would not be a bad idea to invite
the Labour Minister Alexander Pochinok, Mitrofanov even more resolutely
said: ''Why bother inviting him? The government will resign soon and Pochinok
will testify at the Lubyanka [the seat of the Federal Security Service].''
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