Responding to voter requests

Members of the Presidium of the Parliament by traditions adopted the agenda of tomorrow's plenary session and the next, scheduled for 23 March at the last meeting.

Parliamentary Committee on Legislation introduces the package of draft laws, regulating the functioning of the judiciary for discussion of the deputies in the second reading. First of all we are talking about changes to the Constitution and existing laws "On the Status of Judges", "On the Judicial System" and "On the Constitutional Court". The essence of legal innovation is the removal of the age limit for appointment judges of the Constitutional Court, by making them open-ended mandate. Current legislation establishes for them the age limit of 58 years. However, this age limit is not provided for judges of courts of general jurisdiction, and the Court of Arbitration. The law sets the age limit for a stay in these positions 65 years.

The same Committee has initiated amendments to the current electoral law. Legislative novel, authored by Galina Antyufeeva, Vadim Krasnoselsky and Peter Pasat, was inspired by the recent election campaign for elections to the representative bodies of state power. The main task of the initiators of change in some of the provisions of the Electoral Code - was to bring its rules into line with current realities in view of the identified gaps in the legislation. The legislative initiative was preceded by a presentation of the work specially created for the development of its group. Innovations concerned the extension of the list of reasons for early will of the citizens due to a business trip and the performance of public duties as well as more stringent regulatory arrangement propaganda materials. At the moment, voters have the right for early voting only in case of departure from the territory of PMR.

A lot of issues on the agenda of the last meeting of the presidium concerned pensions and health care. Deputy Oleg Vasilaty prepared a legislative initiative concerning the calculation of the retirement pension. They once again exposed a chronic problem when a worker in good faith makes future retirement, with his salary withheld insurance premiums, but they are not listed in the Unified State Fund for Social Insurance management of the enterprise (organization, institution). The parliamentarian’s proposal is to secure citizens' rights to retirement pension if they receive wages and deductions corresponding premium.

A lively discussion was caused by a law-in-draft initiated by the Ombudsman Vasily Kalko. He considers a violation of human rights situation in which the PMR citizen deprived of benefits they deserved because of temporary residence permit. Many deputies, including Speaker of Parliament, Vadim Krasnoselsky confirmed that this problem has been repeatedly raised by voters during the reception of citizens.