DUMA WON'T SCALE ITS COMMITTEES DOWN

MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - The State Duma (Russia's lower house of parliament) has voted down the Rodina faction's motion to bring the number of parliamentary committees from 29 to 16 and to leave one First Vice Speaker instead of two, reducing the positions of Vice Speaker to three, down from today's nine. As the Rodina faction sees it, the person holding the post of First Vice Speaker should be a representative of the Duma majority while the three Vice Speakers should represent other of the chamber's factions.

None of Rodina's proposals received the required 226 votes. Dmitry Rogozin, who leads this faction, said the idea was to remodel Duma after the Cabinet, thereby optimizing the lower parliamentary house's work "in line with the concept and the spirit of administrative reform." Oleg Kovalyov, Chairman of the Duma Committee for Order of Business, warned that the proposals may have negative implications for the chamber's operations.

The Duma Speaker has now nine deputies-six of them representing the United Russia party and the other three being affiliated with Rodina, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the Communist Party. One of the two First Vice Speaker positions is held by Lyubov Sliska, of the United Russia faction; the other has been vacant since Alexander Zhukov's transfer to the post of Vice Premier.