#4 - JRL 7067
Putin wants over 200 laws revised before 2005.
February 18, 2003
ITAR-TASS

More than 200 laws are due to be revised before the year 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday in his address to the Council of Legislators of the Russian Federation.

The Russian head of state said the processes of synchronization of the draft laws on the division of authorities between the federal center and the regional governments and on changes to the laws that regulate the financial and economic activity must proceed along parallel lines.

Putin stressed that these laws should take effect at the same time with the changes to the taxation and budget legislation. He said the country's government was already preparing relevant documents. On the whole, the president agreed with the law makers who stressed in their speeches to the Council of Legislators that the country was in need of a comprehensive revision of its legislation.

Arguing in favor of the need for the division of the authorities and obligations between the federal center and the regions, Vladimir Putin noted, "So much was promised in recent years, that we are no longer able to gain an understanding of those things. " According to experts, the total worth of the state obligations to the population amounts to 6. 5 trillion roubles, while the country's consolidated budget amounts to 3. 5 trillion roubles, Putin stressed.

"It is necessary to divide authorities and put and end to deceiving the population," Putin stressed. "And if we are unable to cope, we should say so in plain Russian. " "It is necessary to say correctly what the priorities are and what the state is obliged to do at any cost to help the disabled persons, war veterans, groups of the population not sufficiently provided for and say what we cannot do so far. "

The president said he found inadmissible the situation in which laws were promulgated while there were no resources to enforce them. "People can forgive all except for lies," said he.

The head of state agreed that all parties, including in the federal center, should bear the responsibility for the accomplishment of the set tasks. He drew the attention of the legislators to the need to set things straight where a provision of one type or another was missing from a proposed package of draft laws.

The president noted, "It is not our objective to build the country to the Soviet design of super-centralization. " "It is ineffective under market conditions," said he.

In explaining the essence of a "mixed" election system in use in the elections to parliaments in the federal constituents, the Russian president noted that the task was to make this system more comprehensible for the population. According to him, "It is not introduced to please somebody or to get somebody elected, not to create competitive advantages for anyone but only to make the country more understandable, stable and predictable. "

The head of state said the voters "Should elect not simply a good person, but a good person whose ideas and political convictions are understandable, a person whose responsibilities are double in characterbefore the country and before the party. "

The president called on the legislators to opt for a better-balanced approach to the solution of this problem. He also expressed readiness to discuss newly emerging initiatives with the State Duma deputies, but noted that it would be inadmissible to think a hundred years, as is the custom in Russia. "We have no historical time to behave in this fashion," stressed he.