MOSCOW, September 24 (Itar-Tass) — The ethics commission of the State Duma lower house of Russia’s parliament at its first meeting on Monday will assess the statements made by deputy from A Just Russia faction Ilya Ponomarev who from the Duma rostrum called his colleagues in the parliamentary body “crooks and thieves,” deputy head of the commission, member of the Communist Party Andrei Andreyev told Itar-Tass.
According to him, a group of 40 members of the United Russia party and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), headed by Dmitry Vyatkin submitted an inquiry to the ethics commission concerning Ponomarev. They demand to bring the member of A Just Russia party to disciplinary responsibility for his behaviour at the last meeting of the spring session. The incident happened when the lawmakers had a debate on the law of defamation against which the opposition protested. Then, on July, 13 Ponomarev, urging the State Duma members to refuse to support the bill, directly used the expression of the famous blogger Alexei Navalny, thus making rude and harsh statements about the other meeting participants.
“Given that United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party have a majority in the commission, I can predict that the decision will certainly be not in favour of Ponomarev,” Andreyev said. The lawmaker added that Ponomarev as a punishment may be denied the right to vote at Duma plenary meetings for a month.
Andreyev said that it is planned to combine the parliamentary inquiry on Ponomarev with the request of State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin who also asked the Duma ethics commission to deal with the incident. “Ilya Ponomarev quickly ran out of the hall,” Naryshkin stated, pointing to the inadmissibility of such a form of address to the State Duma members, “the more so from the rostrum.” “I think the committee on parliamentary ethics also pay attention to it,” the speaker said.