Moscow News
www.moscownews.ru
May 28, 2009
Medvedev adviser pushes strong liberal agenda
By Anna Arutunyan
Far from Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin falling out over key policy issues, Russia's top leaders are united in their determination to modernise the country and prevent it slipping into extremism during the economic crisis, a top adviser to Medvedev said in an interview.
Igor Yurgens, the head of the liberal-leaning Institute of Contemporary Development, said any potential differences in approach between the two men were the least of their problems.
"There isn't a single political risk manager who would advise playing games with a duumvirate," he said at an interview this week in his office, which is in a beautifully refurbished neo-classical Moscow mansion. "They understand that that there is no duumvirate, there is a collective of people who have decided to deal with this situation as a team. For any businessman to start staking on [either the Kremlin or the White House] - that's just bad risk management."
People are looking for signs of a schism, but that is simply because the current political situation is so unique for Russia, said Yurgens.
"It is very unusual that there are two very respected and influential people who are friendly and share a single ideology, but occupy two different, powerful positions. For the first time, our country literally reflects our coat of arms, with the two-headed eagle. Some people get confused, especially political experts. In business, there is more common sense, though."
But that doesn't mean business leaders see a monolithic government, especially as they anticipate new anti-crisis measures ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where Yurgens, who is also vice-president of Russia's Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), will lead a panel on social policy.
Though there is debate between the economic liberals in government and the statists, the real fault lines, according to Yurgens, run along industries and who is allocated resources.
"We certainly can't talk of a simple division," he says. "It's clear that the statists and the liberals have their own views, their own ideology, and their two schools become more visible when there is a debate about where the resources are going to go. [Finance Minister Alexei] Kudrin, for example, is a supporter of a more liberal stance, more modest government spending. But there are people who support more robust spending, especially on the energy industry and the military industrial complex. So de facto there is a liberal wing headed by [First Deputy Prime Minister Igor] Shuvalov and the state capitalism wing headed by [Deputy Prime Minister Igor] Sechin. These are very primitive terms, of course, but they help to understand things."
These differences do not, however, reflect on the relationship between Medvedev and Putin, Yurgens said.
"There is a gentleman's agreement that Putin is helping Medvedev grow stronger. But it's a process in the making. The agreement was made during a booming economy - but it's another picture after the Georgian conflict and the crisis. No one knows how it will turn out. Personally, I am absolutely certain that the two primary figures coordinate everything on a daily basis. But their respective apparatuses, their clans, they may be playing various games. That is not necessarily a terrible thing, though."
Earlier this year, Yurgens criticised the government for too much direct manual interference in the economy in a report by his institute, but now he concedes that the crisis is making liberal reforms, such as anti-corruption measures, increasingly difficult.
"The rule of thumb in fighting corruption is to reduce the presence of the government in the economy," he says. "But that has become practically impossible because of the crisis. Manual control of the economy plays a strong role during the crisis even in the ‘cleanest' countries."
While a number of decrees have made it easier to prosecute officials for bribery, the business community in general is not benefiting from a more transparent relationship with state officials, said Yurgens. "In some cases, there is even more pressure [on business]. Opportunities for making money have contracted on the one hand, but the appetites of local officials in law enforcement have not decreased."
The liberal-leaning part of the population needs to be enfranchised, Yurgens indicated.
"We need new dialogue," he said. "People are dissatisfied with the role of parliament and the political structure, and we need to start talking about how to involve the 15 percent of the population that consider themselves more tolerant and more pro-Western in the political process."
Yurgens said this was no easy process - for Putin or Medvedev.
"If there are democratic elections tomorrow, we cannot rule out that instead of two or three civilised parties we will have skinheads and xenophobes, much like the Hamas victory." The power vertical that has been created to deal with disarray of corruption and violence left over from the late 1990s is largely "mythical" because it is so corrupt itself. The case of Denis Yevsyukov, the head of a Moscow police precinct who killed three people and wounded six more in a shooting spree, highlights just how shaky the so-called "siloviki" structures really are, Yurgens said.
As difficult as they are to implement, transparency, dialogue and political competition are still the only remedies for these perennial problems, he said, adding: "Reforms were halted, but we need to continue them, otherwise we will find ourselves in an even more difficult situation."