In the capital city of the Republic of South Ossetia, in Tskhinval, a round-table :History of Parliamentarianism in the RSO” was held. Current Parliament Members (MPs) and candidate for election, representatives of political parties participating in the election and public activists had gathered at the independent discussion club “For transparent and fair elections”.
The Deputy Speaker of the RSO Parlliament Tarzan Kokoity stated that the current Parliament has been wrongly rebuked for lack of professionalism and insufficient work.
“One should not put the question about which convocation of the Parliament worked more, or which had adopted more laws or vice versa. I would like to stress that all Parliament convocations had achieved a lot; and the Parliament was the body which led the Republic together with the president to independence. I would like to warn both friends and foes from comparing the work of one or another parliament convocation.
He stressed that the forth Parliament had to spend too much time on foreign policy issues to the detriment of domestic policy.
“We had to meet many international organizations, to establish contacts with the Russian law-making bodies. New structures had been formed, including an inter-Parliamentary assembly of member states to the movement “For Democracy and Rights of Peoples”. All these promoted strengthening of South Ossetia’s statehood, and eventually, recognition of our independence”, underscored Kokoity.
The State Advisor to the RSO President Kosta Dzugaev supported Tarzan Kokoity emphasizing that the “parliamentarianism in our republic has gone through historic test and brought the necessary political result, which the people had expected from it and today we are standing on a firm ground of democratic development of our republic”.
“I hope that while working under new political realities the future parliament will bring the same political result”, said Dzugaev.
Deputy Parliament Speaker Yuri Dzitsoity underlined that the current MPs adopted “The Declaration on Genocide Against South Ossetians”, which made it clear to political friends and foes of South Ossetia that the republic was not going to live within the same state with those who had organized this genocide.
We have twice attended the parliament sessions of the RF-Byelorussia Union as observers and this has been a significant breakthrough,” stated Dzitsoity. He also underlined that some of South Ossetian MPs were defending our republic’s independence with weapons in their hands.
”All these speak for the fact that there were enough positive moments in the work of the Parliament and we should be proud of them. If we talk about negative sides, it is true we paid less attention to domestic problems”, said Dzitsoity.
”Edinstvo” Party candidate Mira Tskhovrebova stated that with all its merits, the current Parliament could not achieve more to seriously influence the state and the government policy. “I think that the new Parliament should put emphasis on correcting the laws so that these law would allow the parliament be more effective. We did not have such Parliament”, said Tskhovrebova.
“Fydybasta” candidate Anatoly Khugaev said that the current Parliament “allowed groundless strengthening of the executive branch, and thus putting itself into a powerless position in terms of domestic policy decision-making”.
“In this sense, the fourth Parliament had not been defending the issues of power division between the lawmaking, executive and judicial strongly enough. Our reality proves that the executive branch had embraced the powers of other branches. We consider that in this regard the Parliament did not adhere to its principles well enough. In a normal democratic state, the power should be clearly divided between legislative, executive and judicial branches to make the system of checks and balances work, so that the power is not concentrated in one hand. I think that it is harmful both for the community and the state”, said Khugaev.
