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[Second Issue of the Day]
#10
Moscow Times
January 15, 2002
New Faces But Old Loyalties in Senate
By Natalia Yefimova
Staff Writer
The revamped upper house of parliament is to kick into action this week with a varied bunch of newly tapped senators -- including hard-nosed businessmen, regional leaders and former Cabinet ministers.
Analysts say the new delegates, 177 in all, will work hard to lobby the interests of the groups that backed their appointments, but most agreed that, when it comes to passing key legislation, the chamber is unlikely to defy the political will of the Kremlin.
"The Federation Council is even more controllable than the State Duma," said Nikita Tyukov of the Center for Political Information.
Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov agreed that, in most cases, the senators would be compliant.
"On all politicized or politically ideological issues, they will all support the Kremlin as long as the Kremlin has a clear, firm position," he said.
The overhaul of the chamber, which will hold its first session Wednesday, was an important part of President Vladimir Putin's efforts to centralize authority and rein in the country's powerful governors.
In accordance with an August 2000 law penned by the president, regional governors and parliamentary speakers, who have made up the chamber since 1995, were to be replaced by the start of this year with their appointees. Unlike the previous Federation Council members -- who juggled their parliamentary duties with obligations in their home regions -- the new senator corps will work on a full-time basis.
Since the revamp was announced, various influential groups have been scrambling to secure seats for their own people, and most appointments have been described as trade-offs involving the presidential administration, regional leaders and big business.
"Seats are becoming the object of 'political haggling,'" Moscow State University law professor Suren Avakyan wrote in a recent assessment of the reform.
As a result of this horse-trading, most of the 146 senators approved as of Monday fit into one or more of several overlapping groups: regional leaders, big business, Kremlin proteges or former Cabinet officials and "honorary retirees," such as the handful of governors who gave up their gubernatorial posts to clear the way for more powerful -- usually Moscow-backed -- candidates.
Many observers have paid particular attention to the business contingent, which includes such corporate heavyweights as the deputy CEO of oil major Yukos, Leonid Nevzlin (Mordovia); Transaero CEO Alexander Pleshakov (Penza); Gazprom regional coordinator Leonid Lushkin (Bryansk); and Norilsk Nickel executive Leonid Bindar (Taimyr). Like Duma deputies, the senators must give up their commercial activity for the duration of their term.
Some of these senators, such as Bindar, represent regions where their companies have major interests. But most have been delegated from small regions to which they have virtually no connections.
In a radio interview last week, the Federation Council's speaker, Sergei Mironov, naively argued that the 30 or so businessmen now in the chamber would not use their new political clout to lobby their commercial interests "because the firms they represent are successful enough as it is."
But Leonid Smirnyagin of the Moscow Carnegie Center said the relationship between powerful corporate executives and the regions they represent is a mutually beneficial one: The businessmen get an enviable platform for lobbying their interests, along with immunity from prosecution, while regional leaders -- who were demonstratively distanced from Moscow in 2000 -- get a representative with clout in the capital.
Tyukov agreed that the weakened regions and their high-profile representatives had a symbiotic relationship, with influential senators in high demand. "No one from some small autonomous district, no matter how great he is, has even one-tenth the connections that a Muscovite has," he said.
He added that many of the poorer regions may have likewise received direct or indirect financial aid from their new senators.
Some of the legislation to be considered this year, like the reform of the natural monopolies, will have a powerful impact on businesses across the board, but Tyukov and Markov both said that an open clash between senators and Putin's government was unlikely.
"Even if conflicts do arise, they will not come out publicly," but will be ironed out through negotiations behind the scenes, Tyukov said.
Markov said that some of the economy-related legislation to be considered by parliament had "enormous potential" for igniting discord, but as long as the Kremlin's position was clear and unequivocal, the presidential administration would retain full control of the Federation Council's decision-making.
This control will largely be guaranteed by senators like the Kremlin's public-relations guru, Mikhail Margelov (Pskov); deputy head of the government apparatus, Alexander Torshin (Marii-El); and, perhaps, Kremlin-connected oligarch Sergei Pugachyov (Tuva). These men, and others like them, also represent small or politically insignificant regions with which they have no evident ties.
Other senators with connections to the Kremlin and the Cabinet include tested technocrats like Alexander Bushmin, a deputy finance minister under Alexei Kudrin, and former Energy Minister Alexander Gavrin.
Despite the abundance of officials from Moscow, regional leaders also have a strong presence in the chamber.
Mironov said that 11 senators are former governors or deputy governors returning to represent their regions in a new capacity. These include: former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev, yet to be confirmed, who shocked his republic last month by unexpectedly stepping down from his post; former Governor Leonid Roketsky, who lost his seat in the oil- and gas-rich Tyumen region to Kremlin loyalist Sergei Sobyanin in a fierce battle early last year; the nationalist ex-governor of Krasnodar, Nikolai Kondratenko, who shrewdly hand-picked his successor for the gubernatorial race in December 2000; and former Chukotka chief, Alexander Nazarov, who pulled out of the race to leave Kremlin-connected oil and aluminum tycoon Roman Abramovich with no serious competition.
While curtailing the powers of the regions has been a characteristic element of Putin's centralizing reform, Carnegie's Smirnyagin was a bit more optimistic than others about the senators' ability to fulfill at least part of their functions.
"The current law [on the Federation Council] is sufficient for its members to represent the interests of the regions," he said. But the bigger task, the Council's nationwide functions -- "that's a different thing altogether."
At Wednesday's session, the chamber will confirm some newly appointed members, restructure part of its committees and vote on new regulations governing its work.
Tyukov said one of the chamber's main tasks this political season would be to boost its role in shaping legislation considered by the Duma, and Federation Council officials have said as much.
"The Federation Council will no longer espouse the practice whereby the State Duma passes draft laws without taking into consideration the ... opinions of the upper chamber," senator Nikolai Tulayev of Kaliningrad told reporters Friday. "The Federation Council must be very attentive in considering any law passed by the State Duma."
A spokesman for the Council said by telephone Friday that the draft regulations include an explicit appeal to the chamber to design and submit legislation for consideration by the Duma, as well as amendments to bills going through the critical second reading.
The coming year promises to bring volumes of important legislation. One example is the law on a constitutional assembly, the only body that can make major changes to the Constitution with relatively little bureaucratic hassle. One change that has been repeatedly suggested by Speaker Mironov is the extension of the presidential term from four to five or seven years. Thorny legislation on reforming natural monopolies and the housing maintenance sector will also be considered, along with bills on the painful issue of agricultural land sales.
CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS OF THE FEDERATION COUNCIL
To approve changes to intranational boundaries;
To confirm presidential decrees on introducing marshal law;
To confirm presidential decrees on introducing a state of emergency;
To sign off on deploying Russian armed forces internationally;
To set presidential elections;
To remove the president from power (on the basis of evidence from the State Duma);
To appoint justices of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Arbitration Court;
To appoint and dismiss the Prosecutor General;
To appoint and dismiss the deputy head of the Audit Chamber and half of its auditors.
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