Kommersant: "Tips for an outsider"
Viktor Trifonov
The governing party will tell the President from amongst whom to choose regional governors.
Dmitry Medvedev yesterday introduced a bill at the State Duma which changes the procedure of appointing the heads of Russian regions. Now all the candidates for governor will be nominated by the party which has won the majority in the corresponding regional parliament. The President will still be able to appoint whomever he wishes, but only if his opinion is endorsed by the Chairman of the United Russia Party, Vladimir Putin. Under the amendments, the negotiations with the Kremlin are to be conducted not by the regional party leadership but by the top party leadership in Moscow.
Dmitry Medvedev first aired the idea of granting the party which wins the majority in the regional parliament the right to nominate the candidate for governor in his address to the Federal Assembly on November 5. How that would be implemented was elaborated by the president's amendments to the laws On Political Parties and On the General Principles of the Organisation of Legislative (Representative) and Executive Power Bodies in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation which the President submitted to the Duma yesterday.
Under Mr Medvedev's plan candidates for governor should be selected through a series of consultations between the President and the party which holds the majority of seats in the regional legislature. However, the head of state will consult not the local legislators but the party's leadership. The party's "collective standing body" will, no later than 90 days before the powers of the incumbent governor expire, hold consultations with the President before offering him a choice of at least three candidates.
If the head of state rejects all the three candidates the "collective standing governing body" of the party will hold fresh consultations with the President before proposing another three candidates. If that list still does not suit the President he himself holds consultations with the party which made the nominations and with the regional legislature which will confer gubernatorial powers on the President's candidate. From the results of these consultations the President will be ready to consider yet another troika of candidates nominated by all the parties represented in the regional parliament.
From that point onwards the procedure remains the same as today. The President chooses one candidate and introduces him to the legislators. If the deputies reject him the President proposes a new candidate. If the deputies still do not agree, the President has the right to dissolve the legislature and appoint an acting head of the region.
The bill introduced by Mr Medvedev excludes the President's envoys to the federal districts from the procedure of appointing the heads of regions. Formerly they introduced candidates for governor. Indeed, it was arguably their main duty, if not in form, then certainly in substance. Stripping the presidential representatives of the right to propose candidates for governor to the President deprives them of much of their political and bureaucratic clout. True, they still have some room for manoeuvre: under the law the procedure of nominating candidates, the list of the necessary documents and the procedure of consultations is established by the President. Perhaps the follow-up decrees and executive orders will determine the functions of the presidential representatives, although they are certain to be less sweeping than before.
A much bigger change is introduced into the picture by the delegation of the right to conduct personnel consultations with the President from the local to the central party authorities.
Mr Medvedev has stricken out of the law On Political Parties the provision whereby the top party bodies can delegate to their regional branches the right to select candidates for governor. The President will have to deal with the central party leadership. Under current conditions it means that President Dmitry Medvedev will conduct negotiations with the leadership of United Russia, which at present has the majority in 79 out of 83 regional legislatures.
Gennady Gudkov, a Duma deputy from the Just Russia Party, told Kommersant that it would be more honest to write down in the law that governors are appointed by the Politburo of United Russia as was the case under the Soviet one-party system. Boris Nadezhdin, a leading member of the Right Cause believes that "Vladimir Putin as Chairman of United Russia, Boris Gryzlov as the head of its Supreme Council and Vyacheslav Volodin as the head of its General Council will have the sole right to nominate governors." Mr Nadezhdin predicts that "President Medvedev will be able to appoint as governor only those persons whom United Russia leader Putin will propose."
In other words, the President will have to produce very weighty arguments to persuade the leadership of United Russia to reject the party candidate or face a serious and open political conflict with the governing party and its leader. The party gets additional leverage in appointing the governors in practically all the regions.
But in the context of a "worsening crisis, that neat vertical power structure may spring a surprise," the former deputy of the State Duma and independent politician Vladimir Ryzhkov told Kommersant. He predicts that economic problems would bring tensions between different groups of regional elite to such a high pitch that each of them would promote its own candidate for governor "pouring huge amounts of money to bribe corrupt politicians."
In any case "there can be no question of any democracy", says Sergei Reshulsky, coordinator of the KPRF in the State Duma. "The President will have the right to tell the deputies to go to hell if they refuse to approve his candidate." "If Medvedev needs democracy let him restore popular direct elections of governors by secret ballot," the Communist deputy suggests.
