Due to the fault of the government of Sevastopol, the session of the Legislative Assembly was disrupted and turned into a laughing stock

Today's meeting of the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol was closed an hour after it began, a Politnavigator correspondent reports.

It turned out that the speakers on the issues stated in the agenda from among government officials again did not appear at the meeting. This is quite strange, since the first item on the agenda was the forecast privatization plan for three years, which the governor of Sevastopol Dmitry Ovsyannikov insists on adopting.

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He introduced the privatization plan to the city parliament four times, and three times the deputies rejected it. The last time, at the request of the governor, an extraordinary session was urgently convened with the only issue on the agenda - privatization. But unexpectedly, the pro-governor group in the Legislative Assembly demanded that the consideration be postponed to the next session.

But, as already mentioned, the speaker, Deputy Director of the Department of Property and Land Relations Konstantin Zimin, did not show up for the next session.

“This is all the more strange because my colleagues said that it was necessary to consider the issue at an extraordinary meeting. It is not clear why the speaker did not come to the Legislative Assembly meeting today. But there is nothing to do. I propose to exclude it from the agenda,” speaker Ekaterina Altabaeva commented on the situation.

The pro-governor deputies behaved strangely. They assured that the speakers were about to arrive and asked to announce a break. But when the privatization plan and the next three issues were removed from the agenda, deputies supporting Ovsyannikov pulled out their cards from the system, and it turned out that there was no quorum.

“Some of the deputies who do not want to continue the plenary session have no understanding of our responsibility to the city,” said deputy Vyacheslav Gorelov.

Ekaterina Altabaeva continued to persuade her colleagues to consider at least those issues where the deputies themselves appear as speakers.

“Once again I call for a balanced approach. If you and I now change the order of consideration of issues, we will be able to consider those on which the speakers are in the room. This is an accessible way to overcome the misunderstanding that has arisen. I wouldn't interrupt my work because we have a very busy agenda today. All issues are vitally important for Sevastopol,” Atabaeva said.

Suddenly, the governor's supporters changed the topic and began to claim that government officials did not appear, supposedly as a sign of protest against the fact that deputies were infringing on the rights of journalists. This sounded strange, because the journalists worked in the same mode as at other meetings, when government employees were quite happy with this.

The meeting had to be closed due to lack of quorum.

“Today’s meeting, we have to admit, has become a joke in its purest form. Although, in general, the authorities should work, and not put on some kind of show. It’s a pity that we have come to this,” Alexey Chaly gave his assessment of the events.

The behavior of the city government can be interpreted as simply strange or as insidious. Governor Ovsyannikov learned the childish manner of taking offense at intractable deputies long ago. He had already recalled his permanent representative from the Legislative Assembly and forbade his subordinates to go there with reports. Perhaps what happened today is a continuation of this infantile strategy.

But options are also possible. Let us note that officials, by order of the governor, ignore not only meetings of the city parliament, but also meetings of the budget commission. And there the most conflicting issue for the two branches of government is being considered. The Legislative Assembly adopted the budget for the next year without Ovsyannikov’s amendments, and the governor promised to veto it. Sevastopol may be left without a budget. Where else if not in the specialized commission to look for a compromise.

The reluctance to do this may indicate that officials have somehow decided to do without deputies and thus solve their problems with both the budget and privatization. Rumors about the possible dissolution of the Legislative Assembly have been creeping around Sevastopol for several months.