From the mandate to the Senate – Kommersant

Former Krasnoyarsk governor Alexander Uss may take a seat in the regional parliament, and then in the Federation Council. He got such an opportunity after the refusal of United Russia member Nikolai Kreminsky from the mandate of a deputy of the regional legislative assembly. However, for its implementation, it is necessary that other candidates from the Kansk regional group of United Russia (ER) do not apply for the vacant seat, and the current senator from the Legislative Assembly, Valery Semenov, resigned. Krasnoyarsk political scientists consider such a combination to be quite real, especially since one of the Kan’s candidates has already written a letter of resignation.

The chief doctor of the Kansk Interdistrict Children’s Hospital, Alexei Bobrik, wrote a statement refusing the mandate of a deputy of the Krasnoyarsk Legislative Assembly. He himself told Kommersant about this, explaining that he was not satisfied with the remaining term of office of deputies of the current convocation (it expires in 2026). The place of a deputy from United Russia in the Legislative Assembly became vacant at the end of last week, when Nikolai Kreminsky, general director of ZAO Bolsheurinskoye, resigned his mandate, citing personal circumstances.

As Aleksey Podushkin, chairman of the regional election committee, explained to Kommersant, the leadership of the regional branch of the party should offer a vacant mandate to a candidate from the same regional group. If there are no registered candidates left in it, or only those who refused to fill a vacant seat in writing, then the branch leadership has the right to propose a candidate from another regional group or from the regional part of the list, Mr. Podushkin added.

United Russia has 14 days to resolve the personnel issue. “If the party does not use this right, then the vacant deputy mandate will be transferred by the election commission of the Krasnoyarsk Territory to one of the candidates from the party list in order of priority,” commented the situation in the regional branch of United Russia. When and what kind of decision on the fate of the mandate will be made, United Russia did not specify.

Mr. Kreminsky was the second number in the Kansk regional group. State Duma deputy Yury Shvytkin, who headed it, refused the mandate of a regional deputy immediately after the 2021 elections. The third and fourth places were occupied by the speaker of the Dzerzhinsky District Council Dmitry Ashaev and Alexei Bobrik, respectively. The district council told Kommersant that Mr. Ashaev was on vacation until mid-June and it was impossible to contact him.

The decision of Mr. Bobrik may become one of the intermediate steps necessary to empower ex-governor Oleksandr Uss as a deputy. In 2021, he headed the party list of the United Russia, but after the elections he refused the mandate. Nevertheless, under the current law, a candidate has the right to participate in the replacement of deputy mandates twice, the regional election committee noted. And after Mr. Uss becomes a deputy, the Legislative Assembly will be able to delegate him to the Federation Council.

Mr. Uss himself, after his resignation and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2023, stated that he “received an offer to continue working at the federal level, but at the same time to deal with issues of the socio-economic development of our region.” It was not possible to get a comment from the ex-governor Kommersant.

Since 2014, the post of representative of the Krasnoyarsk Legislative Assembly in the Federation Council has been occupied by Valery Semenov. The phones of his receptions in Moscow and Krasnoyarsk did not answer on Monday. Earlier, Vedomosti reported that in the coming days, Mr. Semyonov will give up the mandate of the senator and go to work in the regional government. He himself told RIA Novosti on Monday that “no decisions have been made to date.”

Krasnoyarsk experts consider the option of replacing Valery Semenov with Alexander Uss possible. “A very likely combination. It is unlikely that Valery Semyonov is eager to hand over the post to the ex-governor. However, if he is recommended to do this by higher federal officials, for example, from the presidential administration, then most likely this scenario will be implemented as early as June,” says political scientist Alexander Chernyavsky. According to the head of the communications agency Sibmedia Agency, Vasily Damov, the so-called presidential quota has been the main option when discussing Alexander Uss’s Senate prospects so far. “The option of delegation through the Legislative Assembly was also discussed, but the problem there was not even how Uss gets into the Legislative Assembly, but that Valery Semyonov should vacate the place of the senator, and with such a desire, at least until recently, he definitely didn’t burned,” he said. At the same time, Mr. Damov does not consider the seat of a senator the only option for employment of the ex-governor, who, in his opinion, “can be ‘exiled’ to some structure for an honorary position.”

Valery Lavsky, Novosibirsk