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RIA Novosti
May 25, 2005
RUSSIA HAS ONE PRESIDENT LESS

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Yury Filippov) - How many presidents there must be in a federative democracy? The answer seems obvious: one.

However, this is an intricate question that can be brought up for public debate in Russia soon. The initiative to abolish the presidency in North Ossetia Russia's constituent republic in the Caucasus, from January 1, 2006 advanced by the republican parliament that has amended the local constitution to this end already, is seen by experts as a preamble to the gradual abolishment of presidential positions in republics throughout the Russian Federation.

The presidency that came into fashion in the former Soviet Union about 15 years ago has not evolved into a national tradition. In 1988, then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev turned down the idea of establishing the post of president in the USSR, but allowed to persuade himself a year later. However, the presidency did not evolve into an efficient instrument in the Soviet Union, as the president was elected by the congress of people's deputies, rather than by a national vote.

Boris Yeltsin amended Gorbachev's mistake by winning a landslide victory at the summer 1991 presidential elections. Thereby, he delivered a crushing blow on the Soviet Union's political structure, which ceased to exist quietly six months after the first Russian presidential flag was hoisted over the Kremlin.

"One president drives out another" was the main principle of confrontation between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. While Yeltsin emphasized he had been elected by a national vote, Gorbachev, in an attempt to diminish the former's status, skillfully used the constitution to "produce" as many presidents in the Soviet Union as possible. Two presidents were elected on June 12, 1991 - Boris Yeltsin and Mintimer Shaimiyev, the President of Tatarstan, a sovereign state within Russia, the fact few people remember today. Shaimiyev still runs the republic, although he has recently been nominated to the post by the Russian president and his candidature had to be approved by the local legislature.

The election of Yeltsin and Shaimiyev set a precedent, and presidents could have appeared en masse in Russia. In the fall of the same year, Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected the president of Chechnya. The policy he pursued was absolutely independent from Moscow's line.

So, how many presidents are there in Russia today? There are 15 of them. However, Russia is a big country with a complicated structure, and even experienced political analysts sometimes forget about the existence of the presidents of, for example, Udmurtia in the Urals, or the tiny Caucasian Republic of Ingushetia, or even Yakutia, whose territory equals in size to more than five countries like France.

The thing is, presidential posts in the republics are not a dire necessity. Republican presidents resemble lava that once helped the eruption of a volcano and later solidified turning into a heap of rocks. Locals regard them as unnecessary blocks that can be removed if need be.

Some people in the constituent republics regard their presidents as the guarantors of state sovereignty and representatives of supreme authority. However, when in Moscow lobbying their projects and trying to secure funds for them, republican presidents look like ordinary regional officials, although high-level ones. Moscow does not bother to differentiate between presidents and heads of Russia's 89 constituent members.

A recent reform that abolished gubernatorial elections seriously undermined regional presidents' positions. Since regional leaders began to be nominated by the president and appointed by local legislatures, they can only be called presidents by force of inertia or out of flattery. The many-sovereign-states-within-one-country model that was sporadically introduced in Russia ten or fifteen years ago did not work.

Speaking about the danger of Russia's disintegration when he came to power, Vladimir Putin apparently meant a conflicting and inefficient model of state structure that was adopted in difficult circumstances and was not intended for a long period of time, rather than international terrorists dealing in Chechnya.

Today, this model has few supporters, and it will hardly become more popular in the future. This is partly because the leaders of the republics, although they may not be referred to as presidents any longer, have not lost their powers in terms of appointment to senior positions or control over legislative efforts of their republics. Anyway, their republics will not lose their sovereignty, either real or imaginary. For example, the clause on North Ossetia's state sovereignty was removed from the republic's constitution five years ago.