The State Duma will continue to deprive deputies of their powers for absenteeism

In the State Duma of the 8th convocation, deputies will continue to be deprived of their powers for absenteeism, three sources at Okhotny Ryad told Vedomosti. “This is not the last deprivation of mandates; there will be others in the near future,” one of them said. It all depends on “how quickly and correctly” the deputies will react to the new signal, because among the deputies there are those “for whom the bell tolls,” an interlocutor in the State Duma apparatus told Vedomosti. In his opinion, the deprivation of the mandate of deputies Vasily Vlasov (LDPR) and Vadim Belousov (A Just Russia – For Truth) on November 1 “scared the deputies”: “This should sober up many and make them pay more attention to attendance.”

The last straw [при принятии решения] There was a meeting on October 26, at which the draft budget was considered in the first reading, the source says: “Several committee chairmen did not attend.” In particular, during the consideration of the country’s main financial document, 50 deputies did not vote. Judging by the electronic database of the State Duma, among the status parliamentarians are Alexander Babakov (vice-speaker, “A Just Russia – For Truth”), Vladislav Davankov (vice-speaker, “New People”), Pyotr Tolstoy (vice-speaker, “United Russia” ), as well as one head of the committee – Anatoly Aksakov (on the financial market, “A Just Russia – For the Truth”). State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, at the end of a seven-hour (as opposed to the usual four-hour) plenary session on October 26, said that “some couldn’t even stand the consideration of the budget”: “We’ll sort it out next week.”

The deprivation of the mandates of deputies Belousov and Vlasov was discussed at a meeting of State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin on October 31 with the leaders of five Duma factions, says another source of Vedomosti. They said that other similar cases were possible. Of the five faction leaders, only the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov did not support this idea, adds Vedomosti’s source. On November 1, United Russia, New People, and the Liberal Democratic Party voted to deprive Belousov and Vlasov of their parliamentary status; the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia – For Truth did not vote.

Formally, they were deprived of their powers for missing meetings of the Commission on Regulations (Vlasova) and the Committee for the Protection of Competition (Belousova).

Although a sentence on bribery came into force against Belousov in May of this year, he is on the federal wanted list. According to the law, he should have been deprived of his powers a month after the sentence came into force, but in the end this happened six months after the sentence – and absenteeism was also the reason.

Sources in the State Duma associated the deprivation of Vlasov’s mandate with his support for the Wagner PMC. They called absenteeism a formal reason – he missed only two plenary meetings out of 162 in this convocation. However, the law on the status of a senator and deputy of the State Duma does not clearly indicate whether participation in one of the types of parliamentary activities (meetings with voters, participation in a meeting of the chamber or a relevant committee/commission) is compensated for failure to fulfill another duty. On October 12, Volodin warned that deputies could be deprived of their mandates ahead of schedule: “If a person does not come to a meeting, this is a failure to fulfill his duties. Failure to fulfill duties also means not meeting with your constituents.”

Belousov should have been deprived of his mandate a long time ago – he has been convicted and does not take part in parliamentary work, says Rostislav Turovsky, vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies: “And Vlasov’s case is the result, among other things, of internal party contradictions. Outwardly, this can be presented as a punishment for inactivity, but Vlasov was a very active deputy.”

The deprivation of mandates of Vlasov and Belousov for absenteeism (the first since 2016, when spravoross, and now foreign agent Ilya Ponomarev, was deprived of his mandate on such grounds) opened a Pandora’s box, says one of Vedomosti’s sources. “After this incident, it is obvious that other deputies will be subject to complaints for absenteeism. And we should expect new deprivations of mandates,” he says.

Deputies disagreed on whether it is worth depriving authorities for absenteeism further. “Deputies invested with power by the people who elected them, when adopting laws by which people must live, are also obliged to comply with the laws and labor discipline,” says deputy leader of the United Russia faction Evgeniy Revenko. According to him, “the mandate is not an indulgence from violations, but rather imposes increased responsibility.”

If a formal reason for depriving a mandate is applied to everyone, then 15–20% of deputies will have questions, says deputy Alexander Yushchenko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation). Vladimir Koshelev (LDPR) disagrees with him: “I don’t think that [мы] opened Pandora’s box. A person who has chosen this or that job, including that of a State Duma deputy, must carry out this work effectively and conscientiously, otherwise there is no point in doing it.” The press service of “A Just Russia – For Truth” noted that they did not support the deprivation of Belousov’s powers, but stated that “the ethics commission had grounds to submit for consideration the issue of depriving him of his mandate.”

There are other questions for parliamentarians, for example, for young deputies whose attendance is worse than experienced ones, says Vedomosti’s interlocutor in the State Duma apparatus. “Some deputies have complaints about their trips to “warm countries” during the special operation. In general, the State Duma is critical of trips abroad and vacations. There is no time to rest when the country is at war,” he emphasizes. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin began the fight for parliamentary discipline back in the 7th convocation. Then amendments were adopted to the regulations of the lower house of parliament, which established that part of the payment required by law would be withheld from deputies for each missed plenary meeting. They prescribed a ban on one deputy voting for another at meetings. But this practice continues today.

Stories like the current one can exacerbate the struggle within individual factions and committees, says Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the RASO political technologies committee: “This risks reducing the controllability of the State Duma, but the benefits are obvious – popularity is growing through such “scapegoats.” [Госдумы как института] among the population.” Parties should select personnel for representation in the State Duma more carefully than introduce new punitive measures, he believes.

The prospects for judicial challenge of such cases are minimal only if serious procedural violations or errors are made when calculating “absenteeism,” says political lawyer Oleg Zakharov. According to him, as practice shows, in this case it is “safer” to be a single-mandate candidate: “Although the grounds for depriving deputies elected differently of their mandate are formally the same, the risk of ending up in such a situation for a single-mandate member is much less. Indeed, in the event of the departure of a “list member,” the party transfers his mandate at its own discretion.” This creates a temptation for potential candidates to study the work statistics of current list deputies for absenteeism and, if any are identified, to initiate the issue of depriving them of their mandate.