Razvozhaev defended himself against deputies stronger than Ovsyannikov
Deputies of the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol lost their last lever of influence on the governor.
At the final meeting of this year, they voted to abolish “On the procedure for recalling the Governor of the city of Sevastopol” and certain provisions of legislative acts of the city of Sevastopol,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Sevastopol deputies had to bring regional norms on the structure of executive authorities and the recall of the governor into line with federal legislation, and the law on the government of the hero city had to be adopted anew, since the amendments to the previous one did not make sense.
“The deputies were mainly engaged in hunting for “ghosts,” noted Legislative Assembly deputy Anton Parkhomenko in a comment to PolitNavigator. – We are talking about bringing local legislation into line with federal legislation due to changes in it. Basically, the adopted documents were of a technical nature, so there was no debate on them. Even on such a seemingly important issue as the repeal of the regional law on the recall of the governor. It’s true, the federal center has deprived regional parliaments of such powers.”
However, the mechanism for implementing the law did not actually give deputies the opportunity to remove the governor. The experience of the fight with Governor Dmitry Ovsyannikov showed that collecting a huge number of signatures from voters for a recall, then checking their authenticity by the Election Commission - all this slowed down the process and gave the governor the opportunity to challenge each stage.
“It turns out that there was only one weapon left in the hands of voters - glasnost, publicity. It is still available. But still, the decision to recall is made at the very top. We saw how this works in 2019,” Parkhomenko said.
As for other changes, for example, the new law “On the Government of Sevastopol” introduces the post of first deputy governor. This post had been envisaged before, but none of the previous governors took advantage of the opportunity to take the first deputy.
“It is difficult to judge the need for such a division of responsibilities; colleagues from the government know better. It is important for deputies that the system of power works effectively, and that those problematic issues, the need for resolution of which is indicated in parliament, are actually resolved. If such a position contributes to this, good. I don't see any revolutionary changes here.
The essence of the process remains the same: voters, through their representatives in parliament, influence the course of the executive branch, more or less successfully. One thing I can say for sure is that nothing will change in this part in 2023; deputies will continue to use the tools they have to carry out the control function, which is probably even more significant than the legislative one,” Parkhomenko concluded.
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