They don’t need more – Newspaper Kommersant No. 220 (7421) of 11/28/2022
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The parliaments of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are finishing bringing regional charters and constitutions in line with the new federal law on public authority. The document allowed governors to hold office for more than two terms in a row, but not everywhere this right was used. As Kommersant found out, in Yakutia, the Nizhny Novgorod and Leningrad regions, they decided not to remove the restriction, and in Sevastopol, Udmurtia, Tatarstan and some other regions, the amendments are still not ready. However, the main beneficiaries of the reform – the governors who are finalizing the second term – have already got rid of the obstacles.
The norm prohibiting governors from holding office “for more than two consecutive terms” has already been excluded from the constitutions and charters of 62 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, Kommersant calculated. In another seven regions, the relevant amendments are under consideration by the parliament or are being prepared for introduction.
Recall that last year the State Duma adopted a new law regulating the activities of regional authorities (see Kommersant of December 15). Unlike the previous document, it does not contain the limit on the number of gubernatorial terms, which was established in 2012. Many then considered that the ban had been lifted, but the head of the Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, explained: the regional authorities should decide for themselves whether to remove this rule from their main law or leave it. There was enough time for reflection: the charters and constitutions of the constituent entities must be brought into line with the new federal law no later than January 1, 2023.
Most parliaments expectedly allowed governors to rule indefinitely back in the spring. Despite the words of Mr. Krasheninnikov, regional deputies argued that they simply did not have the right to leave a ban: since it is not in the federal law, it cannot be in the regional one either. “Otherwise, we will take away additional guarantees from officials,” said Denis Goloborodko, vice speaker of the Altai Regional Legislative Assembly, for example.
However, in July, the Parliament of the Leningrad Region, on the initiative of Governor Alexander Drozdenko, brought the regional charter in line with the new law, but left the norm on governor terms unchanged. “I don’t even want to discuss this topic,” Mr. Drozdenko said at the time. And the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Sergei Bebenin, added that the region “expressed its commitment to one of the basic democratic principles: the rotation of state power.”
On November 16, the example of the Leningrad region was followed in Yakutia. Il Tumen (parliament) of the republic corrected its constitution, but Il Darkhan (head of Yakutia) did not cancel the restriction for the third term. Vladimir Prokopiev, chairman of the parliamentary committee on state building and local self-government, explained to Kommersant that only those provisions that were formulated imperatively in the new federal law were brought into line: “The topic is under discussion. If society matures and considers it necessary, then we can still do this (the abolition of the restriction.— “b”) come”. On November 24, deputies of the Nizhny Novgorod Legislative Assembly acted in a similar way at the initiative of Governor Gleb Nikitin. “The rule on deadlines is not among the mandatory changes,” Andrei Gneushev, deputy governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region for domestic policy, told Kommersant. “The decision on deadlines is in this case not an obligation, but the right of the region.”
In practice, not a single governor has yet encountered a restriction, since since its inception, no one has simply completed it until the end of the second term. In 2023, Andrey Vorobyov and Roman Kopin, the heads of the Moscow Region and Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, will expire their second term. They will no longer have obstacles to re-election: in the Moscow region, the ban was lifted on September 9, and in Chukotka, the amendments are planned to be considered on November 29. Also next year, the powers of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who theoretically could fall under the term limit, will expire, but he was not originally in the charter of the capital. By the way, as in the laws of some other subjects: the Belgorod, Kostroma and Tomsk regions, Ingushetia and Chechnya, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Khabarovsk Territory.
As for the three regions that have retained the restriction, their governors are still far from a potential third term: the Yakut head Aisen Nikolaev and the Nizhny Novgorod Gleb Nikitin finalize only the first term in 2023, and the Leningrad Alexander Drozdenko will complete the second only in 2025. We add that in Sevastopol, Udmurtia, Tatarstan, Kalmykia and the Tver region, nothing is known about the decision of the authorities on the issue of time limits.
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