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The Moscow Times, January 15, 2003

Duma Gears Up for Spring Session

By Natalia Yefimova

The State Duma churned into action this week after its winter recess with lawmakers focusing on a major redistribution of powers among federal, regional and municipal authorities -- the centerpiece of the last session before this year's parliamentary race hits full stride.

Deputies from the pro-Kremlin coalition making up the chamber's majority said the reform package, developed by the presidential administration and scheduled to be considered next month, was their top priority.

"Today, for example, responsibility for providing people with heating lies with the authorities as a whole and with no one in particular. After the reform, authorities on every level -- federal, regional and local -- will have clearly delineated rights and obligations, backed up ... with hard cash," Vladislav Reznik, deputy head of the coalition's Unity faction, said Tuesday.

Deputy Duma Speaker Vladimir Lukin of the liberal Yabloko party agreed that the reform was the most significant legislation to be considered during the spring session, which was to kick off with its first plenary meeting on Wednesday.

"The delineation of powers concerns the entire composition of the country," Lukin said.

He added that the reform package would stir up plenty of debate since "nothing that involves shifting funds from one place to another can ever be smooth sailing."

The most controversial item on this session's agenda is the overhaul of the national power grid, Unified Energy Systems. The UES reform package passed in a first reading late last year, but a second reading is not expected until at least February. The Duma Council is set to consider new government amendments next week.

The reform -- which would involve substantial price hikes for electricity and, consequently, many consumer goods -- poses a big political risk ahead of December's Duma elections and next year's presidential race.

During his recent address to the nation, President Vladimir Putin called on lawmakers not to let anxieties about the elections hinder their work this year.

Political analyst Boris Makarenko of the Center for Political Technologies said he believed the deputies would take this as a direct order and would push ahead with important bills, "although it will be difficult to avoid populist pre-election legislation altogether."

Independent Deputy Viktor Pokhmelkin agreed. "There will be lots of populist initiatives. That's just the nature of election year lawmaking," he said.

For whatever reason -- whether to free up time for campaigning or to get their work done in the allotted time period -- deputies have planned a lighter schedule than they had last fall.

Although the spring session is two months longer than the fall session, the Duma has slated the same number of bills to be considered between now and June as it had for the session that ran from September to December -- 500. By the end of the fall session, though, only 359 bills were submitted to the Duma and of these the deputies managed to consider 304.

Wednesday's opening meeting was predicted to last only half a day, with the comical bill on Russian as the state language as the main item on the agenda.

Other legislation to be considered includes a much debated new law on media, changes to the status of senators, an attempt to slash the country's bureaucracy, pension reform, mandatory auto insurance, harsher penalties for illegal drug use and pedophilia and new measures against corruption.

Some of the thornier issues up for debate will include the broader housing and utility reform -- the dire need for which has been thrown into relief by this winter's heating crisis but would likely involve the same kind of unpopular price hikes as the UES overhaul.

The deputies will also try to tackle proposals for education and health care reform. Some 300 teachers picketed outside the Duma on Tuesday to protest the Labor Ministry's proposal for changing its system for paying public-sector wages, which lawmakers have criticized, saying the plan "does not guarantee a genuine improvement in education professionals' standard of living."

Most deputies said they believed the spring session would pass without any major surprises. "There won't be any real tension," said Deputy Georgy Tikhonov, a pro-Communist member of the Russia's Regions faction. "That's because everything is controlled by the old Kremlin team -- Cosa Nostra."

The Moscow Times, January 15, 2003

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