Kommersant: “Medvedev reappoints old governors for lack of fresh talent”
Russia's regions seem to be short of qualified personnel for gubernatorial posts. At least, one can be excused for thinking so following President Dmitri Medvedev's decision to reappoint several long-serving regional heads for yet another term in office.
Thus, Kaluga Governor Anatoly Artamonov will stay for a fourth consecutive term and his counterpart in Tambov, Oleg Betin, for a fifth, provided that regional legislatures confirm Medvedev's nomination.
The Medvedev administration and the pro-Kremlin party United Russia are now also contemplating the reappointment of the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod province and the president of the Republic of Yakutia.
Artamonov and Betin are both veteran governors. The former took the post after winning a gubernatorial vote in November 2000, and was reelected in March 2004. His tenure was further extended in July 2005, as then-President Vladimir Putin replaced gubernatorial polls with an appointment scheme.
Betin was first placed in charge of the Tambov region back in 1995 by Putin's predecessor, Boris Yelstin. But he had to leave just a few months afterward, having lost the gubernatorial election to a Communist contender, Alexander Ryabov. He regained the post in 1999, won a third term in 2003, and in 2005 was reappointed for another five years by Putin.
Members of the United Russia party form the core of Artamonov's support base, but people of other political affiliations are also among his sympathizers. Sergei Fadeyev, deputy chair of the regional branch of the liberal party Yabloko, pointed out in an interview with Kommersant that "the [government's] human resources policy of the past few years has shown that, unfortunately, new appointments are no better than those that precede them." "With this in mind, it's positive news that the region will not be run by some unknown oligarch coming from the outside," he concluded.
Betin's governorship in Tambov seems more controversial. He faces staunch opposition from the Communists, for example. "If any of the three Communist MPs votes for Betin, that person will be expelled from the party," warned Tamara Pletneva, who represents the Tambov region in the State Duma, the federal parliament's lower house. "And if the governor continues to work the way he has in the past few years, we will fight him at every turn."
Rostislav Turovsky, a professor at the Moscow University political science department, justified President Medvedev's choice, citing a lack of qualified personnel to fill top executive posts. "Even if he wants to change governors after three terms in office, Medvedev can't really do so in practice," he said. "The country does not have enough competent personnel; the President has no team of his own, from which to select governors; and besides, most regional heads have no major failures that would justify being sacked ."
Medvedev will now have to find candidates for the top executive positions in the republic of Yakutia, after the recent resignation of Vyacheslav Shtyrov, and in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where the incumbent, Valery Shantsev, will see his current term end in August.
The first round of consultations on the issue has just been held between leaders of the United Russia party and the first deputy of the presidential staff, Vladislav Surkov.
Alexander Timofeyev, secretary of the party's Nizhny Novgorod branch, told Kommersant, after attending the consultations, that eight candidates were currently under consideration and that a short list of three would be determined within the next few days.
Sources on the board of the United Russia regional political council said that Mayor Vadim Bulavinov was highly likely to find himself among the top three candidates and could be the main challenger to Shantsev. Bulavinov refused to comment, however, saying, "I don't even know anything about such consultations taking place."
Shantsev is now away on vacation, and cannot be reached for comment. But in recent remarks, he made no secret of his willingness to remain Nizhny Novgorod governor for a second term. "[Serving] two gubernatorial terms is quite realistic," he said. "[I could stay on for] a third one, perhaps, if my performance proves satisfactory to all, but any successor would find the region in good shape if that's what's decided. But if continuity of power is not maintained, the Nizhny Novgorod region will develop in a disorderly way."
On April 29, Shantsev had a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who praised the Nizhny Novgorod region for achieving an industrial growth rate three times as high as the nation's average.
According to the governor's inner circle, his meeting with the premier "lasted much longer than initially planned" and spanned a wide range of issues.
Curiously, even staunch and consistent critics of the regional authorities, such as Alexander Khinstein, believe that reappointment of the incumbent governor could be the best option for Nizhny Novgorod. The State Duma deputy told Kommersant in an interview that he personally would welcome the prospect if Shantsev "draws the right conclusions from the errors and failures he made in the first five years of his governorship."
As for Yakutia's current top executive, Shtyrov, he has already filed his resignation, and is likely to be replaced either with the republic's prime minister, Yevgeni Borisov, or the presidential chief-of-staff, Aisen Nikolayev.
Natalia Gorodetskaya, Tatiana Petrova, Vsevolod Inyutin, Roman Kryazhev
