Nezavisimaya Gazeta: “No radical political reforms in store for Russia”
The State Council does not risk launching a drastic political reform.
The leaders of the opposition parties did not dare use the high rostrum of the State Council to offer far-reaching political reforms. They merely criticised the results of the October elections and complained about the governors and the legal system. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, as the United Russia leader, invited them to determine the strategic direction of national development. He said that the political system should be reformed with caution and sound conservatism to prevent these changes from following the Ukrainian scenario.
Putin’s appearance at the State Council became the biggest intrigue of the Friday meeting. According to NG sources, the government did not interfere in the preparations of the meeting, although usually its officials take an active part in this process. This time, nobody knew till the very last moment which government officials would attend the meeting.
At the crossroads
It would be strange if the prime minister did not attend the meeting. However, in the middle of the week, Putin did not come to the session of the Presidential Council on National Projects, although the president’s instructions on implementing his address to the Federal Assembly made the prime minister responsible for reporting on the project “Our New School” at this meeting.
In the meantime, half of the 50-page report on improving the political system, drafted by a working group headed by Governor of the Kaliningrad Region, Georgy Boos, was devoted to an analysis of Putin’s reforms during his presidency. The State Council was supposed to decide whether the country was going in the right direction in the last 10 years and if not, suggest what to do next.
On Friday morning, the governors were mostly concerned over the initiative that the United Russia Supreme Council’s head, Boris Gryzlov, made public shortly before. He said that in his opinion, it is necessary to establish super regions in Russia. Even Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Envoy in the Caucasus Alexander Khloponin, who, in his tenure of the head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, took a direct part in merging regions, did not show any enthusiasm about this idea. He told the NG correspondent that this idea should be carried out with caution. Out of a dozen governors from United Russia polled by NG, none has agreed to support Gryzlov, having forgotten all about party discipline. The regional bosses who do not have to think about it tried to emphasize that they support the announced changes. Thus, Nikita Belykh, the head of the Kirov Region told Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the Kremlin Executive Office, that his region is almost ready to become energy effective.
In the lobby of the Grand Kremlin Palace, the party leaders behaved as if the political State Council wasn’t their big feast, although it was convened at their initiative. Until recently, the opposition leaders complained that they could not get access to the governors. On Friday morning, the governors were at their disposal, but the representatives of the seven Russian parties were aloof and did not show any desire to establish contacts with regional leaders. The leaders of the parliamentary opposition blended into the crowd. Only Georgy Bovt, co-chairman of the Right Cause party, propped up one of the walls of the Andreyevsky Hall with a doomed look.
Opposition accused of squabbles
Putin appeared in the Malachite Hall a couple of minutes before the start of the meeting. Bypassing the live corridor of numerous journalists, the placid prime minister proceeded to the Georgiyevsky Hall. President Medvedev followed him in a moment. His opening address seemed to leave the opposition no chance. The president did not conceal his disappointment over the opposition’s unjustified complaints and advised its leaders to refrain from sweeping accusations of the electoral system in the future.
Georgy Boos made a much tougher statement on this score. He described the opposition’s unfulfilled promise to shower the courts with complaints as political squabbles. The opposition party leaders were offended. Sergei Mironov, the leader of A Just Russia, explained that it is pointless to sue because everyone knows how the Russian courts operate. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, suggested imposing a 40% ceiling for the winning party. The grievance of the communists was not new, either. Their leader, Gennady Zyuganov, asked regional bosses to stop harassing members of his party in the regions. The historic initiatives that the leaders of the parliamentary opposition were going to suggest dissipated in complaints. It seemed that they needed the meeting only to ask the governors not to aggrieve them at elections and to share fairly in the votes.
Putin draws a line
Putin was attentively listening to the speakers and meticulously jotting something down. He was getting ready to rebuff the opposition. Mitrokhin complained about a lack of response from law-enforcement bodies against countless cases of fraud on the Internet. “If someone confesses to murder on the web, the Prosecutor’s Office should immediately deal with it,” he reasoned. Putin’s reaction was extraordinary: “Half of the Internet is porn! Are we going to refer to the web? You must take the matter to court with evidence.” Nobody objected to the prime minister, although, according to NG sources, a report to the State Council made it clear that a politician claiming power must master virtual communications.
Closer to the end of the meeting, it became clear that the opposition was not going to make any far-reaching proposals. Putin decided to take the initiative. He did not allow his audience to doubt, even for a moment, the correctness of the political reforms of the past decade. “We have done much on this score in the last few years,” he said, adding that first of all it was necessary to restore the country’s territorial integrity.
“Illicit ‘political dealers’ and groups of oligarchs have been removed from the country’s political scene. The multi-party system has been consolidated,” Putin noted with obvious pleasure. He agreed that there is room for improvement in the political system, but warned that it is necessary to prevent it from following the Ukrainian pattern and sliding toward totalitarian rule. In his opinion, any effective political system should be based on sound conservatism: “It should not tremble like jelly at every touch,” he warned. The prime minister actually instructed the president and other participants in the meeting to act with caution and in time. Medvedev’s reaction was very laconic: “Nobody should have illusions about the stability of the environment in which we operate, but we should appreciate and preserve it.”
Shaimiyev’s resignation
News about the voluntary resignation of President of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiyev, was the biggest intrigue of the State Council. It came close to the end of the meeting. An NG source close to the presidential administration said that at the meeting with Shaimiyev on Friday, the head of state thanked the Tatarstan leader for excellent work. He noted, however, that the changing era requires a new person to occupy his position and asked him to help with a successor. The NG source said: “Shaimiyev was ready for this conversation. A decision was made not to wait until the last moment of his term to announce a successor.” He said that Shaimiyev was allowed to leave decently, thereby creating a precedent of voluntary resignation that helped the long-time leader of the region save face.
Incidentally, an NG source in Shaimiyev’s closest entourage said that he commented among friends that he was going to leave in 2010 as early as two years ago. It is assumed that Shaimiyev asked for retirement for ideological reasons. He was not comfortable giving monthly oaths to the federal center about his readiness to modernise a system that he had personally created during a little less than 20 years. Tatarstan is one of the most advanced regions in Russia. No other region has developed projects on electronic government and the social card to the same extent.
Elina Bilevskaya
