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#13 - JRL 8365 - JRL Home
Moscow Times
September 14, 2004
Editorial
A Lurch in the Wrong Direction

The sweeping measures announced on Monday by President Vladimir Putin to strengthen the Russian state and its ability to repulse terrorist threats are cause for grave concern. Rather than tackling terrorism head-on, the president's plans will result in little more than greater centralization of power -- tightening the Kremlin's stranglehold on the body politic and further entrenching a system that the tragedy in Beslan has brutally discredited.

Putin proposed, first, to scrap direct gubernatorial elections, replacing them with a system in which the president submits nominees to regional legislatures for approval. He also called for doing away with first-past-the-post contests for the State Duma; instead, the lower house is to be composed exclusively of candidates elected from party lists.

Under these proposals, the Kremlin will accumulate even greater power at the expense of participatory democracy and the already enfeebled governors. It looks very much like the Kremlin's damage control strategy is to be centered around making regional leaders the scapegoats for recent failures, thereby minimizing the responsibility that should properly be assumed by the central authorities, in particular by members of Putin's inner circle such as Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev.

The president has, of late, been emphasizing the importance of a robust civil society and broader public participation in the political process for countering the terrorist threat. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that Putin has now called for the abolition of direct gubernatorial elections -- as if to say that he has no faith in the public's ability to vote for the "right" governor.

Putin did come out in support of establishing some sort of "public chamber" to serve as a "platform for broad dialogue" and to provide public oversight of the executive branch, "including law enforcement and the security services." But in a normal democracy these functions would be performed by parliament. Moreover, it is far from clear who would appoint representatives to the chamber, and whether or not it would have any teeth.

The overriding impression is that Putin and his entourage are out of their depth, instinctively reaching for the traditional "panacea" for Russia's ills -- centralization of power. However, in the absence of proper public oversight and institutional checks and balances, a powerful, personalized regime does not translate into a strong state or efficient government. Until the Kremlin realizes this and acts accordingly, it will not be able to combat the terrorist threat effectively or, indeed, anything else.