State Duma allowed governors to be elected to office an unlimited number of times

The State Duma adopted in the third and final reading the draft law on public power in Russia, which allows the heads of regions to be elected for more than two consecutive terms. About it it says on the website of the lower house of parliament.

According to the bill, the number of governor’s terms will be determined by the legislative assemblies of the regions. The number of terms is not limited in the law. One term, according to the document, will be five years. The President will be able to early terminate the powers of the heads of the regions only because of the “loss of trust” without specific grounds.

The heads of the regions themselves were forbidden to be called “presidents” and to use the words “Russian Federation” in the title of the position of the head of the region. The last Russian region where there is a presidential office is Tatarstan. At the end of October, the State Council of Tatarstan opposed the bill. The deputies called “certain provisions of the bill,” including the one on the unified name of the office of the heads of the regions, contradicting “the foundations of the constitutional system of Russia as a democratic federal law-governed state.” The head of the State Duma Committee on Legislation and State Construction Pavel Krasheninnikov explained that such a norm was introduced back in 2010 – it is adhered to by all subjects of the federation, except for Tatarstan.

In addition, due to the new law, regions may completely refuse to vote on party lists in elections to regional parliaments. Now at least 25 percent of the deputies should be elected on party lists, the rest – in single-mandate constituencies.