The Duma will be opened up – Newspaper Kommersant No. 48 (7493) dated 03/22/2023

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin on Tuesday announced the adoption of a number of measures aimed at increasing the openness of the lower house. Broadcasts of plenary meetings on the Internet are resumed, representatives of the regions will be able to participate in video format in the consideration of reports from the government and other state bodies, and the busiest committees will have full-time press secretaries. Experts attribute these decisions of the Duma leadership to the fact that the deputies got out of the “turbulence”, calmed down and understood the “rules of the game”.

Viacheslav Volodin raised the question of the Duma’s openness at the March 21 plenary session. The day before, he said, he discussed these ideas with the leaders of all factions and received support. One of the proposals concerns the participation of representatives of the regions and the expert community via videoconferencing in the consideration by the Duma of the reports of the prime minister, ministers, the Accounts Chamber, the Central Bank, as well as in parliamentary hearings. “Already on March 23, during the government’s report, this format will be implemented for the first time,” the speaker promised.

He also proposed introducing additional posts for press secretaries in the Duma’s busiest committees in order to ensure their “greater publicity, so that there is a dialogue, openness.” Recall that the Chairman of the State Duma has long been concerned about the problem of the effectiveness of the work of the committees. At the beginning of last year, he advocated the introduction of a KPI system for them, but the deputies have not yet developed it. And at the end of February 2023, Vyacheslav Volodin criticized the committees where the most bills had been “stuck” since the beginning of the eighth convocation.

Finally, the third measure to increase openness was the resumption of the broadcast of plenary sessions (with the exception of the discussion of the agenda) on the website of the State Duma and Duma TV. As previously reported by “Kommersant”, on Tuesday morning, Sardana Avksentieva, deputy head of the New People faction, sent a letter to Mr. Volodin asking him to resume the broadcasts interrupted by the decision of the council of the chamber of October 17 at the initiative of the speaker. The deputies explained this decision by the fact that there were many issues on the agenda of the meetings relating to the special military operation (SVO), and excessive openness could harm security. Ms. Avksentieva, in her letter, pointed out that now “the situation has somewhat stabilized.”

Viacheslav Volodin told his colleagues that he had discussed this issue with the leaders of the factions and they approved the idea of ​​resuming broadcasts. Since the introduction of these restrictions, legislation has been formed aimed at protecting the participants of the SVO, and its law enforcement practice has been worked out, so the chamber can return to broadcasts on the Internet, the speaker explained: “We are making a decision to enter a new level of openness, where we are talking about , about maintaining the format of a closed conversation when discussing the agenda, on the other hand, immediately after the transition to the second question, the broadcast will begin on our resources. Together with the video conferencing mode for the regions and experts at major State Duma events and additional rates for committee press secretaries, this will make it possible to more effectively ensure the publicity of the Duma’s work.”

The deputies supported the chairman’s proposal, and immediately after the end of the discussion of the agenda, the broadcast on the Duma website was switched on. True, even two hours had not passed before Mr. Volodin threatened to move the meeting to a closed session again. During the discussion of amendments to the laws on the status of military personnel and on social guarantees for employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, non-factional deputy Oksana Dmitrieva asked Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov a question about the “routing” of the wounded to the Northern Military District, referring to the case known to her, when a wounded man was sent back to Part. “We agreed that we are discussing issues related to the SVO behind closed doors,” the speaker snapped at Ms. Dmitrieva. “Colleagues, let’s return to the closed form then. Well, it’s useless! .. ”However, the development of the topic did not follow, and the broadcast continued.

Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the RASO Political Technologies Committee, believes that the closedness of the Duma was “a temporary measure to minimize public risks in the face of geopolitical turbulence.” “The online participation of regional legislative assemblies should give the events held in the State Duma a federal scale, especially since the Duma already sends the bills under consideration to the regions in order to receive feedback. In addition, this creates an opportunity to appeal to federalism in real time, if, for example, the government will promote some unnecessarily unified solution, ”the expert believes. He also notes that the need to introduce rates for press secretaries in committees has been discussed for a long time: “But there are simply no such positions in the staff list of the apparatus, which is illogical. In some committees, this function is already performed by assistant committee chairmen, although the task is to work on PR for the entire committee, and not just their chairmen.”

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin links the decision to increase openness with the government’s report, which the Duma will hear on March 23. “This event will be promoted as much as possible in the public space, including with a regional component, especially considering that single-mandate deputies represent the regions,” the expert expects. In addition, he recalls that the broadcasts were closed when the deputies’ emotions began to go off scale: “They began to emphasize their patriotism in every way, actively criticized the Ministry of Defense. The rules of the game were completely incomprehensible. Now these rules, obviously, have been determined. At the same time, in the history of the broadcasts, “the New People faction was raised a little,” Mr. Makarkin states: although we are talking about procedural things, “for political experts, this is a certain signal.”

Ksenia Veretennikova