Spravorossy fails to collect 90 signatures of deputies under a request to the Constitutional Court regarding the abolition of indexation of pensions for workers. The LDPR factions and the New People did not support this initiative. The chances of finding out whether the rules in force since 2016 comply with the Basic Law become illusory.
At the end of November last year, the leader of the “SR” faction, Sergei Mironov, announced the start of collecting signatures under an appeal to the Constitutional Court: Right-wing Russians wanted to ask how the article of the law “On Insurance Pensions” in force since 2016 on the abolition of indexation of pensions for workers corresponds to the Constitution. In order for the request to be sent, it is required to collect at least 90 signatures of State Duma deputies. The “SR” has 28 mandates in this convocation.
Mr. Mironov expressed hope that at least the factions of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (57 mandates) and the New People (15 mandates) would support the initiative, and this would be more than enough.
It’s been a month and a half. The result is disappointing. As Valery Hartung, deputy head of the SR faction, told MK, “it’s not working yet,” the document was signed by only 88 people: “except for our faction, in full composition of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation,” and “single deputies from other factions,” but not United Russia ” Mr. Gartung did not name the “single” ones. According to him, the independent deputy Oksana Dmitrieva supported the initiative, but Yevgeny Marchenko, who became independent after being expelled from the ER faction, did not support it.
The “new people” refused to sign, although Vladislav Davankov, vice-speaker from NL, said in words earlier that this faction is for solving the problem of indexing pensions for workers. “I don’t know what will happen next,” Mr. Hartung honestly admitted. “Negotiations are underway,” said MK is another source in the SR faction.
An interesting story with the LDPR. Both in words and when voting for various bills proposing to return the indexation of pensions to those who work, this faction is invariably in favor. Why does he not want to support the request to the Constitutional Court? “There are norms of political ethics, and such issues are resolved at the level of faction leaders. Mironov and Zhirinovsky did not meet on this topic, ”the head of the Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, Yaroslav Nilov (LDPR), explained to MK.
He recalled that when the Liberal Democratic Party prepared a request to the Constitutional Court for the distribution of deputy mandates a few years ago, initially “SR” did not support it either, but after Zhirinovsky’s conversation with Mironov, she changed her mind, the request was submitted to the Constitutional Court and was considered.
Why didn’t the Right Russians directly contact the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party? “And why turn to him if he has already declared from the rostrum of the Duma that he will not sign anything with us,” says Mr. Hartung …
All these factional intrigues, omissions and excuses produce a strange impression. It would seem that there is a chance to finally get an opinion on a painful issue for millions of Russians from the only one authorized to assess the constitutionality of a particular law – the Constitutional Court, but no!
And the question is not idle. Many experts and deputies believe that the widely publicized amendment that appeared in the Constitution in 2020, which promises Russians a pension system based on the principles of “universality, fairness and solidarity of generations” and indexation of pensions “at least once a year in the manner prescribed by federal law”, means the same approach to both working and non-working pensioners.
True, the Ministry of Labor has repeatedly explained that the Constitution is observed, pensions for those working in our country are also indexed according to the law, but only on paper, and they begin to be paid in full only after the citizen does not quit.
At the end of December 2020, after a meeting with the head of the FNPR, Mikhail Shmakov, the president instructed the government to propose options for returning the indexation of pensions to workers by February 1. But since then, neither the head of state, nor the prime minister, nor the head of the Ministry of Labor has ever said exactly what options were presented to the Kremlin.
And all the bills that propose to return the payment of pensions to all pensioners in full, invariably receive a negative opinion from the government and are rejected by United Russia (among which, however, there are also a lot of supporters of a return to the rules that existed before 2016). And now the State Duma is awaiting consideration of several initiatives on this topic, including from the parliaments of Khakassia and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, from the communists and the LDPR …
Unofficially, some deputies from different factions, in a conversation with MK, explain the difficulties with collecting signatures by “the Kremlin’s unwillingness to once again arrange a public discussion around a sensitive topic and put judges in an uncomfortable position.” Political scientist Konstantin Kalachev, in turn, believes that the appearance of a request to the Constitutional Court, unanimously signed by all the Duma opposition factions, is “unacceptable” for the authorities also because “it can create a precedent for their unification on the issue of the current agenda.”
“Moreover, whatever the hypothetical answer of the Constitutional Court, this is an unnecessary reminder that the amendments to the Constitution did not make Russia a social state,” he told MK. And what is happening around the request now gives reason “once again to speculate that the parliamentary opposition is like a swan, cancer, pike and the fourth faction”…
Since 2016, the number of working pensioners in Russia has almost halved: they either go into the shadows, or simply leave their jobs as the difference between the pension of a working and unemployed becomes more and more impressive, or they are registered as self-employed, which we consider to be unemployed and have the right to full indexing.
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