Whatever Putin and Medvedev said, there was no doubt that transfer of Putin to the Prime Minister’s chair would turn on the process of pulling the powers towards the White House.

Now it has begun: the head of the President’s Administration Sergei Naryshkin has called to changing the Constitution with the purpose of strengthening the role of the government. So far high ranking officials have not dared to make such proposals.  

In Mr. Naryshkin’s opinion, it would be useful to decrease the number of “subjects of the right of initiative”. As of today, according to the Article 114 of the Constitution, the following positions and bodies are entitled to the right above: President, government, Federation Council, members of the Federation Council, State Duma deputies, regional parliaments, also Constitutional and Supreme Courts, and the Supreme Court of Appeal within their competence. Adding up all that together it turns out to be over 700 people to be “subjects of initiative”. However, this is so only in theory. And in practice the bills are proposed not by all the above mentioned.      

The regional initiatives have always been rejected by the State Duma, with rare exceptions made. As for individual initiatives by deputies and senators, it was possible to pass them during first convocations of the Duma with the energy and personal authority of the authors. In recent convocations, where the majority came to United Russia, only pre-arranged with the Kremlin initiatives had the chance to be passed. 

Nonetheless, the regional parliaments and single deputies introduce bills that are considered by the Duma committees and cause the public response and in case of failure they give their authors opportunity to accuse the Duma of blocking their useful initiatives. Such reproaching happens even in the situation where practically all the legislative bodies are controlled by United Russia. The “elder” brothers do not want to notice the “juniors”. This way, the Legislative Assembly of St Petersburg complaints regularly that the State Duma always rejects its social-oriented bills.  

The head of the President’s Administration suggests solving this problem in a drastic way through reduction of the number of “subjects”. As it is alleged by him, “when others (not the government) make legislative proposals, they usually express the local electoral preferences, and even private or corporate interests, and the interests of keeping up their own image”. As for the government, “it has biggest resources for realization of the initiative with good practical outcomes” and it is the first to “receive signals of necessity of preparation new bills”.   

Well, the message is clear: it’s only government that should be left the right to introduce bills. And what about the President! Or he doesn’t have enough resource either and doesn’t get the signals first? Of course, no one is going to change the Constitution right now, assures Mr. Naryshkin, and yet this task should not be postponed for too long.  

In the meanwhile the proposal in question seems to be dubious and Mr. Naryshkin’s arguments are not convincing. Doesn’t the government express “private and corporate” interests too or interests of keeping up one’s image? How are we to interpret, for example, the last decision by the government before Dmitry Medvedev’s inauguration about acceleration of rate of growth of tariffs for natural monopolies? As for “signals” about necessity of preparation of this or that bill, the deputies, who communicate more often with the voters than ministers do, of course they are the first to receive those signals.    

Let it be reminded that government is the executive power. Its job is to execute the laws. Yes, in many countries governments are entitled to introduce most bills. But then again in those countries governments are formed by the Parliaments and are controlled by them.  

According to Article 104 of the Russian Constitution the function of the Russian government is giving its opinion to the financial-economic bills and the bills are not allowed to be considered without that (which is a convenient instrument of blocking undesired bills). And if it became the monopolist for introduction of bills, then the parliament would be left working like an “applauding body”.     

Of course, now, when United Russia has a constitutional majority in the Duma the proposal by Mr. Naryshkin is of little practical importance: anyway now no proposal can be passed without being approved by Putin. But in the future some new parliament might learn that it only can wait the bills to be introduced by the government. And changing the Constitution would be too difficult.     

Then again, if the goal has been set of the strengthening the branch of the power where the “national leader” is sitting at the moment, then the process will go further. It’s not for nothing that Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of liberal-democrats, who has always been the most reliable indicator of the Kremlin’s intentions, has begun talking of parliamentary republic after many years of ardent speaking for the presidential form of governing.