The Federation Council demands that MPs to come to work

Russia’s “sicknote” politicians will at least now be forced to produce a good reason for not attending parliamentary sessions.

The state Duma has been plagued by poor turn-outs this year, prompting changes to the laws governing representatives.

From now on they will be required to put in a shift unless they have a proper reason to miss parliamentary sessions, RIA Novosti reported.

These changes were prompted by words from the top when president Dmitry Medvedev said he was surprised to see more than 80 per cent of the seats were empty during debates.

The State Duma has since accepted changes to the regulations that stipulate that the MP have to be present at the plenary sessions.

However, missing members can still pass on their voting card to a colleague who will attend – and need not inform the chamber of this. It raises the prospect of more unseemly scrambles as delegates scurry around to vote on behalf of absent friends. 

Welcome reform

Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov has been advocating the amendments for a long time, RIA Novosti reported. “Any MP, and any senator, who is receiving a massive, in Russian terms, salary must be aware that coming to the sessions is his main responsibility, for which he gets paid a lot of taxpayers’ money,” he said.

The Speaker also said that the situation in the Senate was much better than in the State Duma. When a senator is going away on a business trip, he has to inform the chamber’s apparatus, and the information on the senators to be present at a session is passed on to the chairman, as it is registered in the guidelines.

Mironov said that situations like in the State Duma, when a single MP is “playing the piano” and voting for several of his colleagues, do not occur in the Federation Council.