How presidential candidates used lawmaking in their campaigning

All four presidential candidates – the current head of state and three State Duma deputies – have the right of legislative initiative. However, as Kommersant found out, in fact, only two of them resorted to “campaigning by lawmaking”: Leonid Slutsky (LDPR) introduced 15 projects during the campaign, and Vladislav Davankov (“New People”) – 11. The expert explains this the fact that their headquarters have many PR specialists, and, for example, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation employs political strategists of the “old formation”, “tailored” to agitation and propaganda work.

During the current campaign, President Vladimir Putin holds almost no purely campaigning events. He also did not show increased activity in legislative activity: after the initiative group supported the nomination of Mr. Putin for a new term, he introduced to the Duma only three bills on the ratification and denunciation of various international treaties, and all of them have already been adopted.

But the leader of the LDPR, Leonid Slutsky, and the vice-speaker from the New People, Vladislav Davankov, actively used lawmaking as part of their election campaign. Mr. Slutsky, since the LDPR congress nominated him for president on December 19, together with his faction colleagues, has introduced 15 bills into the Duma. Most of them relate to the protection of the rights of different categories of citizens. In particular, the Liberal Democrats proposed giving children from large families a 50% discount on university tuition fees; prohibit the recalculation of fees for housing and communal services “retroactively”; legislate the status of volunteers in the Northern Military District zone and their right to compensation in the event of harm to life and health. True, the latest initiative was returned to the authors by the relevant Duma committee on civil society due to the lack of a government conclusion, which should evaluate all bills on expenses covered by the federal budget.

Two election projects of the Liberal Democrats relate to trade: they proposed obliging retail chains to sell goods from their “native” region in an amount of at least 25%, as well as changing the rules for compiling price tags in order to combat the practice of reducing the weight or volume of a unit of goods while apparently maintaining its value. There were also initiatives on the popular topic of migration control: the LDPR introduced a bill to extend the period of permanent residence in the Russian Federation from the date of the decision to issue a residence permit until the submission of an application for citizenship. Together with the extension of the period of residence before obtaining a residence permit, the wait for citizenship should stretch to ten years instead of the current five.

Vladislav Davankov, who signed 11 bills during the presidential campaign, also did not ignore the problem of migrants. He proposed fining and expelling foreigners from the Russian Federation for “offensive harassment of citizens.” However, the government gave a negative review of this project, pointing out that the current legislation already provides for liability for offensive harassment and obscene language in public places, and citing a ruling of the Constitutional Court, which clarified that a formal approach to the expulsion of foreigners is unacceptable.

Other “favorite” topics of the New People candidate include local government and the Internet. On the first issue, he noted the initiatives on the return of direct elections of mayors (by the way, a similar project was introduced by deputies from the LDPR led by Leonid Slutsky) and on the right of citizens to recall the heads of municipalities and local deputies on the basis of an annual secret ballot on the public services portal. And on the Internet, the most resonant projects were the project prohibiting bringing citizens to administrative responsibility for “likes” on social networks, and amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, which, under certain conditions, remove publications on the World Wide Web from the category of ongoing offenses (this allows users to be punished for posts many years ago). However, both initiatives did not find support in the government. The Cabinet of Ministers rolled out amendments on “likes” twice, and in its response to the draft on ongoing offenses, it indicated that the proposed approach “will critically limit the possibility of bringing persons who have committed relevant offenses to administrative responsibility, and will negatively affect the preventive function of the legislation on administrative offenses.”

The “election portfolio” of the “New People” candidate also included bills on other topics popular with voters. In particular, party members led by Vladislav Davankov proposed canceling the monthly payment for utilities if the air temperature in the apartment fell below the standards for at least one day, and raising the scholarship for excellent students to the level of the minimum wage. In addition, the vice speaker co-authored a high-profile bill banning the use of animals in circuses.

Deputy Nikolai Kharitonov, whose candidacy the Communist Party Congress nominated for president on December 23, has since co-authored only three bills. These are amendments on confiscation for crimes against state security (they were signed by almost 400 deputies), an inter-factional initiative to ban the sale of energy drinks to minors, and a project introduced by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to abolish personal income tax for citizens with many children.

In the staff of the State Duma Committee for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, which is headed by Mr. Kharitonov, his apparent passivity in comparison with other presidential candidates was explained to Kommersant by the “specifics of the work”: “Some issues are resolved in the form of adopted laws, some by amendments to bills, including on the federal budget, partly in the form of government decrees and other by-laws.” Among the real achievements of the communist in the committee they named, for example, the adoption of the law “On Northern Delivery”, which “the regions have been waiting for 20 years”, approval at the presidential level of the decision on the Arctic mortgage, expanding the availability of air travel in the Far East and resolving the issue of “compensation for payment costs” travel for retired northerners to their vacation spots.” At the same time, Mr. Kharitonov’s bills “are not populist, they are carefully worked out, the economic component has been calculated,” the committee emphasized.

“Election bills are a tool for creating news events, and not the result of candidates’ efforts to agree on legislative changes. For example, for direct elections of mayors, the federal law does not need to be changed; internal politics in the regions must change. But it sounds nice populist,” explains Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the Russian Public Relations Association. “There are many PR specialists in the headquarters of Slutsky and Davankov, so their legislative initiatives are more likely to simply repeat theses from their election programs. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation employs political strategists of the old formation, who are “sharpened” on agitation and propaganda work, and not on introducing bills.”

Ksenia Veretennikova