Single-members in the steppe – Newspaper Kommersant No. 27 (7472) of 02/14/2023
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The head of Kalmykia, Batu Khasikov (“United Russia”), proposed changing the procedure for the formation of the People’s Khural (parliament) of the republic. Now all 27 of its deputies are elected on party lists. Mr. Khasikov considers it necessary to leave only 10 “list” mandates, and distribute another 17 in single-mandate constituencies – this way, in his opinion, “local leaders” will be able to get into parliament. The opposition is confident that the reform will play into the hands of United Russia.
With the initiative to replace a purely proportional electoral system with a mixed one, Batu Khasikov came up last Friday at the strategic session “Time for the first – the view of the young.” According to him, the People’s Khural should become “even closer to the people,” and each deputy should “be accountable to the territory from which he was elected.” “Let’s say his countrymen voiced problems, he fixed them. A year passes, and he tells his fellow countrymen what he did: what he succeeded in, what failed, what are the reasons. There may be objective reasons – it takes time. Or maybe subjective – the deputy does nothing,” the head of Kalmykia explained.
If a single-mandate representative appears in each district of the republic (there are 13 municipal districts in total and one urban district – Elista), then it will be possible to assume that “each resident will have his own deputy,” Mr. Khasikov is sure: “There will be skeptics who will say that it’s a utopia. But we understand that we need to strive for this.”
At the moment, Kalmykia remains one of the seven constituent entities of the Russian Federation, where the legislative body is entirely formed according to party lists. In addition to it, a purely proportional system operates in six republics of the North Caucasus – Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia and Chechnya. In the middle of the 2000s, when the policy of strengthening parties was proclaimed, the “proportional system” was actively introduced at the suggestion of the federal center (for example, in 2007, the State Duma was completely formed according to party lists). It was then that Kalmykia also abandoned the use of the “majority”, although until 2008, some of the deputies of the People’s Khural were elected in three-member constituencies.
In the 2010s, the reverse process began in the regions – a return to a mixed electoral system. Basically, parity was established in legislative assemblies, when one half of the deputies was elected from lists, and the other half from districts. However, in recent years, the proportion has begun to change more and more in favor of single-members. With the initiative to reduce the “listed” mandates, United Russia usually comes out, who, like Batu Khasikov, talk about the need to “bring” the deputies closer to the voters. The federal law on public authority, adopted at the end of 2021, allowed the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to refuse party lists altogether, but there have been no such precedents yet (with the exception of Moscow, which, as a city of federal significance, switched to purely majoritarian elections back in 2014).
The People’s Khural has already managed to support the initiative of the head of the republic. According to Anatoly Kazachko (United Russia), speaker of parliament, a return to a mixed system “will revive the political process and make it possible to identify new leaders.” “If in some period the methodology of forming a multi-party system was justified, which was dictated by the need to accelerate party building, today the political elite needs bright leaders who can work effectively for the benefit of their constituency, region, country,” explained the chairman of the People’s Khural.
The opposition, in turn, is confident that the reform is designed to strengthen the position of United Russia. According to non-party deputy Arslan Kusminov, the authorities, mindful of the results of the 2021 State Duma elections, in which United Russia received 39.5% of the vote in Kalmykia against 70.6% in 2016, decided to “give mandates to areas where people are more loyal to the party in power and where there is no such control over the voting procedure, as, for example, in Elista.” “On the one hand, this scheme makes it possible for independent candidates to be nominated,” says Natalya Manzhikova, a member of the Just Russia faction. “But independent self-nominated candidates have problems collecting signatures. Therefore, most likely, to be nominated (in districts.— “b”) will be supporters and members of “United Russia”.
We add that the process of “departization” of regional legislative assemblies is traditionally activated on the eve of elections. In September 2023, new convocations of parliaments, in addition to Kalmykia, will be elected in 15 subjects, and in some of them the number of “listed” mandates has already been reduced. For example, at the end of last year, the Rostov Legislative Assembly and the Smolensk Regional Duma abandoned an equal proportion (in the first, 40 single-mandate members and only 20 “list members” will be elected, in the second – 32 and 16, respectively). A draft law on the transition from the proportion “25/25” to “34/12” has been submitted to the Yaroslavl Regional Duma. Vladimir Shtygashev, Speaker of the Supreme Council of Khakassia, also came up with the idea of reducing “listed” mandates, but it has not yet found practical implementation.
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