MOSCOW - A bill has been proposed to State Duma to change the parliamentary elections date from December to September 2016, Deputy Speaker Igor Lebedev told reporters on June 11.
“Today we submitted a bill in which we are proposing to reschedule the elections for the third Sunday in September,” he told reporters on June 11.
The bill was backed by representatives of three factions: Russian Liberal Democratic Party, United Russia and A Just Russia, Lebedev said. Efforts to reach a compromise with the Communist Party faction failed, he said.
“Initially we proposed the second Sunday of September but the Communists insisted on the fourth. We tried to find a compromise: United Russia suggested the third Sunday. But at the recent consultations Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov (Communist Party leader) stated that his party will only agree to the elections being rescheduled for November,” Lebedev said.
Last week State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin stated that the 2016 December parliamentary elections should be brought forward to September in order for the 2017 budget to be approved by the deputies who will take part in its realization. “The 2017 draft budget must be considered by the State Duma that will already be responsible, to a certain extent as parliament, for this budget and will conduct its own control by using the tools of parliamentary control,” Naryshkin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television.
That requires “the elections to be brought forward to September,” he said.
Naryshkin explained why this was necessary: “Because the main work, say, the bulk of work over a draft budget for each year, if we talk about the parliament, falls on the autumn months.”
The idea of rescheduling the elections from December to September was recently expressed by the leader of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party and State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Speakers of both houses of the Federal Assembly, Naryshkin and Valentina Matviyenko, spoke in favor of such a decision.
