State Council to discuss political system reform

MOSCOW, January 22 (Itar-Tass) -- President Dmitry Medvedev will chair
a meeting of the consultative State Council on Friday that will discuss
the reform of the political system in the country. Representatives of all
seven registered political parties, including the opposition not
represented in parliament - Right Cause, Yabloko, Patriots of Russia -
were invited.
On Saturday Medvedev discussed development of political and party
institutions, parliamentary democracy, local self-government, judicial and
law enforcement systems with leaders of State Duma factions.
In protest of the conduct and the results of regional and municipal
elections in October three of the four major parties stormed out of the
State Duma. Medvedev invited their leaders for a discussion and a month
later proposed several initiatives to streamline elections legislation. He
said he was ready to listen to the proposals of all political forces.
Kaliningrad regional Governor Georgy Boos will deliver the main report
at the State Council. The Communists submitted most proposals for the
document.
"We have no illusions the State Council will adopt all of them, but it
would be difficult to ignore them," said Ivan Melnikov, the No2 man in the
Communist party.
The Communists and other opposition parties are likely to express
their claims to the ruling United Russia party and propose their own law
bills on guarantees to the opposition.
However all the four major parties support Medvedev's initiatives to
drop the collection of signatures for election registration, to streamline
early voting procedure, prevent manipulations with absentee ballots, and
provide equal media access to all parties.
United Russia Chairman Boris Gryzlov proposed to reduce regional
two-house legislatures to one-chamber parliaments and unify their names.
The LDPR of Vladimir Zhirinovsky wants to strip the ruling party of
the right to nominate local governors and proposes to move the next
parliamentary election from December to March 2011.
In his annual state-of-the-nation address Medvedev made a dozen of
proposals to reform the political system, including single criteria for
the number of deputies in regional legislatures, the removal of the
signature collection term, the right for the parties to form factions
regardless of the number of seats in parliament, and the possibility for
the parties that got over 5 percent of votes to have a minimal
representation in parliament. At present the election hurdle is seven
percent. He also urged equal access for all parties to federal and
regional media and called to consider a switch to exclusively proportional
system of regional elections.
"The State Council is not a body of state authority, but a platform
for the discussion of development problems with due account of the
opinions of regional leaders," said Alexei Chesnakov, director of the
political situation center.
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