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Russian lawmakers to enjoy own social network - newspaper

Social network called "The Parliamentary Portal"

MOSCOW, July 10, /ITAR-TASS/. The lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, initiated a project to launch a social network, "The Parliamentary Portal," for lawmakers across the country to debate on professional issues, Izvestia daily reported on Thursday.

A representative of a group responsible for the creation of the so-called ‘e-parliament’ said “the system is intended for lawmakers and [political] experts, whom members of the parliament will be able to invite for discussions.”

“They [lawmakers] will have the right to create an account, post information and edit it. The rest of web users will be able to follow lawmakers’ posts and repost their debates as well as comments to other social networks such as Twitter, VKontakte, Facebook and others,” the representative said.

Igor Lebedev, a vice-speaker of the State Duma, said there were currently registered a total of 245,000 lawmakers across the country and they were not consolidated well enough.

“The complicated political agenda demands tight cooperation between professionals and the new professional network is in fact a tool for finding prompt solutions for acute issues,” Izvestia quoted Lebedev as saying.

He said the intended network would not only enable the organization of debates on lawmakers’ new initiatives in the on-line mode, but to engage lawmakers from all regions of Russia in such discussions.