My profile:
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov. Another deputy complained to Gryzlov on Wednesday that the Duma session was too boisterous to conduct business. Many absentee deputies attended the session after a Ren-TV report embarrassed them into showing up.
Attendance vastly improved in the State Duma on Wednesday after a television report exposed poor turnout, but some deputies complained that fellow lawmakers were chatting so loudly that they drowned out the speakers.
Viktor Ilyukhin, a deputy with the Communist Party, urged Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov at the opening of Wednesday's session to force lawmakers to stop discussing their private affairs and quiet down.
"The hall is buzzing, the hall is discussing some other problems," Ilyukhin said, RIA-Novosti reported. "It's impossible to speak if you are the first to speak."
Each Duma session traditionally begins with a five-minute speech on politics delivered by the Communists, RIA-Novosti said.
Gryzlov said the noise indicated a drastic increase in turnout.
"Some of the deputies have been skipping out for six months and now, seeing their friends, sprang to embrace them," Ilyukhin told The Moscow Times.
Ilyukhin said he proposed opening Duma sessions with protocol matters, not political speeches, to give lawmakers some time to settle down. He said Gryzlov promised to think over the proposal.
Another deputy offered a radical proposal on how to improve Duma attendance. Absentee lawmakers should be monitored with the help of electronic bracelets used to track people placed under house arrest, Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Sergei Ivanov suggested at the session Wednesday.
But Gryzlov rejected this idea, pointing out that Wednesday's turnout had improved without tracking devices.
Parliamentary slackers came into the spotlight in May after Ren-TV television aired footage of a Duma session successfully passing legislation on drunk driving even though only 88 of the 450 deputies were in attendance.
Duma regulations allow the deputies to authorize their colleagues to vote for them, but it is unlikely that all 88 deputies exposed by Ren-TV had legal clearance to vote for others, Ilyukhin said Wednesday.
A 100-member list of the worst offenders in both houses of parliament was compiled by the Public Chamber, but it was never published officially. Leaked data indicate that the richest lawmakers, including billionaires Duma Deputy Andrei Skoch and Federation Council Senator Suleiman Kerimov, are the most prone to skip parliamentary meetings.
The Duma will make attendance mandatory but plans to compile a list of acceptable excuses for skipping, Gryzlov said Monday.
