In the “servants,” they are looking for ways to work during prolonged air raids. One idea is that deputies go down to shelters and vote from smartphones. The “servants” sell this as modern and practical.
But the problem is much deeper than technology.
The vote of a people’s deputy is not a like on an app. It’s personal constitutional responsibility for the state’s decisions.
In the session hall, it’s clear who is present and who is voting. There is a public process. There is an electronic system. There is an opportunity to correlate a specific deputy’s action with the result.
What happens when a smartphone replaces this?
How to guarantee that a person is voting personally? And not technical staff ticking the necessary boxes?
How to exclude multiple devices or the use of different accounts?
How to independently verify that the announced result accurately reflects the votes cast? And not counted ‘as needed’?
We can devise ever more complex authorization, Wi-Fi control, confirmation by the Counting Commission. But a simple question arises: why create a problem that we will then heroically solve with technology?
There is another model. And we have already gone through it in significantly more challenging days — during the siege of Kyiv in the spring of 2022.
Complex issues are agreed upon in advance by the factions. No one’s position is dismissed a priori. Committees and working groups operate. Discussions can be held online. A contentious issue is not raised until an acceptable solution is found.
And when there is no immediate danger — deputies enter the session hall and personally and publicly vote on the prepared package of decisions.
Quickly. Transparently. Without a parliament in a smartphone.
And there is one more argument.
During an alarm, a soldier does not switch to fighting via smartphone. A rescuer does not extinguish a fire remotely. A driver does not leave the bus. Critical infrastructure workers continue their work.
It would be strange to create a special reality for people’s deputies where the main problem of the war is how to work more conveniently from the basement.
The war requires adapting the parliament. But it should not make the parliament less of a parliament. On the contrary.
The more difficult the circumstances, the more important personal voting, transparent procedures, and responsibility for each decision become.
The consensus model of 2022 is interesting not because it’s ‘more convenient than phones.’ It shifts the focus of parliamentary work from mechanically obtaining 226 votes to pre-formulating a decision. This aligns very well with the “EU” requirement to restore institutional functionality.
We shouldn’t transfer the current bad parliamentary practice from the session hall to a smartphone. We need to return to normal parliamentary practice — negotiating, preparing decisions, and then personally being accountable for them.
