Putin moves to strengthen Kremlin power
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| Mon, 09-13-2004 - 6:20pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Russia%20Security
Monday, September 13, 2004 · Last updated 3:11 p.m. PT
Putin moves to strengthen Kremlin's power
By MARA BELLABY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Monday demanded an overhaul of Russia's political system, including an end to the direct popular election of governors, saying the changes were needed to combat terrorism.
Critics charged the Russian leader was using the bloody outcome of the Beslan school siege to grab more power.
The former KGB spy, saying the future of the country was at stake, called for creation of a powerful anti-terror agency "capable of not only dealing with terror attacks but also working to avert them, destroy criminals in their hideouts and, if necessary, abroad."
Some 430 people have been killed in terror attacks in Russia over the last three weeks, including 330 people in the bloody end to the school siege in Beslan in southern Russia. More than half the dead at the school were children. Ninety people died when suspected Chechen women suicide bombers blew up of two Russian airliners in flight.
Curiously, however, the Russian leader's proposals focused largely on electoral changes. Putin said he would propose legislation abolishing the election of local governors by popular vote. Instead they would be nominated by the president and confirmed by local legislatures. He said the change was needed to streamline and strengthen the executive branch to better combat terror.
Putin also asked for an overhaul of the way Russians elect their parliament. The entire 450 seats would be elected from candidates on party lists. At present about half are chosen that way, meaning many candidates can win seats while representing no party. It also had allowed a candidate to win a place in the legislature even if representing a party that garnered too few seats as an organization to win representation.
Critics warned that Putin's reliance on central control could weaken the nation further separating those in power from their constituents.
Since taking office in 1999, Putin has constantly worked to rein in the governors. He has tossed them out of Russia's upper house of parliament, appointing seven regional envoys to monitor them.
"Today, all the power agencies that are supposed to fight terrorism are subordinated directly to the president. ... It's incomprehensible why on top of that he has to name governors," Sergei Mitrokhin, a leading member of the liberal Yabloko faction, told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio. "It shows that the president doesn't know what to do, he's at a loss."
Sergei Markov, a political analyst with close ties to the Kremlin, said the president's move against the governors could help curb corruption that has flourished in some regions.
"At the same time, it means ... a lowering of (their) general political authority and a serious lowering of political pluralism," Markov told Ekho Moskvy.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few opposition deputies in the State Duma, scorned the president's political proposals and warned that the next election would produce a Duma of "marionette party lists and (that) won't enjoy any authority."
Russians, however, feel that the elected governors and legislators are even more corrupt than Communist administrators in Soviet times. They also have traditionally clamored for a firm hand to restore order and now want action against terrorism, often telling journalists terrorist attacks would never have happened under the late dictator Stalin.
Putin also said official corruption had resulted in terrorists getting official travel and residence documents "leading to grave consequences." Putin named one of his closest confidants, Cabinet chief of staff Dmitry Kozak, to represent him in the southern district that includes the Caucasus, which he called "a key strategic region for Russia" and "a victim of terrorism and also a springboard for it."
He also proposed a new structure called the Public Chamber that he said would strengthen public oversight of the government and the actions of law enforcement agencies.
The Russian president, who in 1999 as Russia's prime minister ordered troops back into Chechnya after apartment bombings in Moscow blamed on Chechens, made the new proposals Monday to Cabinet members and security officials convened in special session.







He's reduced his real options to just two with his actions here... fight an unending war in Chechnya, trying to subdue what probably cannot be subdued, or abandon it to it's own devices and let it go it's own way. That's the way I see it in any case.
~mark~
I view this move as another step backwards. The last election he silenced the opposition, now this,
Putin uses war on terrorism to tighten grip on democracy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/14/wruss14.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/14/ixnewstop.html
President Vladimir Putin announced radical changes to Russia's democratic institutions yesterday that will give the Kremlin greater power than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
In what critics say amounts to a serious setback for Russian democracy, Mr Putin effectively negated the right of citizens to elect a regional representative. Instead, the country's 89 regional governors will be proposed by the president.
The former KGB spy also announced that seats in the Duma allocated to single-member constituencies will be scrapped in favour of a fully proportional system.
The move will accord his United Russia party, which can already count on the backing of about two thirds of the deputies in the Duma, even greater control.
The announcement, made in an address to regional governors, follows the school siege in southern Russia that ended with the deaths of more than 300 people, half of them children.
Mr Putin suggested that his initiatives would make Russia safer and easier to govern.
But critics said he was using the terrorist attacks for political purposes. Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal deputy who was himself elected in a single-member constituency, said: "Such proposals have nothing to do with fighting terrorism. The Kremlin is simply using the momentum ."
Since coming to power five years ago Mr Putin has made no secret of his admiration for many aspects of the Soviet system. While he has pursued a pro-western foreign policy, he has heavily curbed media freedoms and brought down big businessmen who have challenged the Kremlin.
He has also done much to curb regional autonomy, a reversal of Boris Yeltsin's policy of giving the regions as much sovereignty "as they could swallow".
If, as seems certain, Mr Putin's measures are passed, the Kremlin will propose regional governors whose appointments will then be voted on by regional legislatures. It is unclear what will happen if the Kremlin's candidate is rejected.
Few dispute that many regional governors in Russia are hardly paragons of democracy. Some are corrupt and have formed alliances with unscrupulous businessmen and gangsters who have helped them win their positions.
Most Russians, who anyway associate democracy with the worst excesses of the Yeltsin era, are unlikely to complain about the changes.
But previous moves to curb the power of the regions have done little to raise standards. United Russia has a record of overlooking corrupt and even criminal activity providing that the representative is loyal to the Kremlin.
Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Mercator analytical group, said: "In reality the governors are not very well controlled by the electorate.
"But it is counter-productive to take the initiative away from the people. The first shoots of democracy are being trampled on. This is a move towards Soviet times."
Vladimir Rimsky, an analyst with the Indem think tank, said the move was part of Mr Putin's established policy of strengthening the central bureaucracy at the expense of local control. But he said he doubted whether they would make events such as the attack on the school less likely.
He said: "The administration in Moscow is unable to see all that is happening in the regions. The Beslan events prove that. Such a vertical power structure cannot be effective in fighting terrorism because it removes all local initiative and requires a long chain of approvals for any decision.
When something like that happens decisions have to be taken quickly." However, others said Mr Putin's moves were understandable in the context of a worsening security situation.
Alexei Pushkov, a member of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policies, said: "Putin's main concern is not the development of democracy, but the enhancement of security."
Other initiatives include the creation of a unified anti-terrorism agency and appointment of a close associate, Dmitry Kozak, to oversee the northern Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, Ingushetia and Northern Ossetia.
Russia is not the US but I see some parallels between the two nations and their leaders' reactions to terrorist attacks. If Putin is wise he will learn from our mistakes in Iraq but he may feel that circumstances are different enough to give a different outcome as well.
I really doubt that Putin will let Chechnya go its own way--he would consider it a sign of weakness to do so.
Warm and fuzzy--yep, I'm feeling it!
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.