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Belykh's blog: normal political dialog at last?
Anna Arutunyan - Moscow News - themoscownews.com - 1.12.12 - JRL 2012-8

Few will be surprised that one of the top LiveJournal themes this week was political ­ but what makes Kirov region governor Nikita Belykh's blogged rebuttal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin so exciting is just how many taboos it's managed to break. Just think: it was a rebuttal, it was public, it was blogged, and it was by a governor ­ but most of all, it was to Vladimir Putin. Is it me, or is politics actually coming back to the imperial court?

To appreciate why Belykh's blog post about something as boring as energy tariffs managed to become one of the top viewed entries on LiveJournal, with some 900 comments as of Thursday, just go back to Putin's televised dressing-down of Kirov region authorities Tuesday over a 40 percent energy hike. Clearly one of his populist measures, Putin's latest harangue had officials looking nervous even before it started ­ the Prime Minister ominously took the time to list through a pile of documents and newspaper clippings in front of him, and in Putin Land that rarely bodes well for his underlings.

"How is it that hot water tariffs grew by 40 percent? Doesn't anyone control these things?" Putin asked. And it certainly didn't help that the man giving the explanation was not the governor, but his deputy, Alexei Kuznetsov, who stammered over the video link up that Belykh was on holiday.

"What day is it?" Putin then asked. "It's the 10th. It's a working day. Please send him a little signal... that it's time to get back to work."

It's no wonder that the remark had media scrambling to figure out why Putin was "attacking" Belykh like this and what it could mean for the precarious Kremlin balance between the liberals and the statists (Belykh, appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev in 2008, was a liberal from the oppositionist Union of Right Forces party). When Putin "sends" officials or businessmen anything ­ whether it's a "signal" or a "doctor," as with the hapless Mechel chief Igor Zyuzin back 2008 (who also failed to show up to a meeting with Putin because he was sick) ­ onlookers often mistake it for the wrath of God. How else to explain that Zyuzin's steel company lost some $6 billion as its stocks plummeted in the direct aftermath of the comments?

But it's 2012, not 1565, and certainly not 1937, and Belykh, to his credit, didn't look like a man bracing for a divine thunderbolt to strike him. Instead, he did what any responsible politician would do: in his LiveJournal post that very evening, he calmly explained that he was taking a long-overdue holiday and that it was his prerogative to do so. That the 40 percent price hike was a problem that had already been resolved, and that his deputy was not informed of this problem because energy tariffs were not on the original agenda for the meeting with Putin. The following evening, he sent a detailed report on the tariffs issue with Putin, which he posted on Livejournal. Though he did not write this to Putin directly, he did muse, publicly, about why the Prime Minister had been informed about the tariff hike, but not that it had already been resolved.

And what of the Prime Minister? On Wednesday, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin wasn't criticizing Belykh for taking a holiday. He was just trying to get everyone to focus after the 12-day break. By Thursday, he informed media that Putin hadn't read Belykh's responses because he was too busy for LiveJournal. What was heartening, however, was that Peskov called the entire incident simply part of "routine work."

If there are no further consequences for Belykh, then the incident offers a glimmer of hope that the rebuttal will indeed send a signal to all the officials out there: there is a much healthier (if slightly more boring) way of conducting politics, that it's ok to argue with Putin if he criticizes you. And, to the law enforcement officials, that Putin's anger is not a signal to take away business and launch criminal probes.

And then, perhaps, instead of the shock and awe tactics often used to govern the country, we'll see the first signs of normal political dialog that the Kremlin says it wants to see.

Keywords: Russia, Government, Politics - Russia News - Russia

 

Few will be surprised that one of the top LiveJournal themes this week was political ­ but what makes Kirov region governor Nikita Belykh's blogged rebuttal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin so exciting is just how many taboos it's managed to break. Just think: it was a rebuttal, it was public, it was blogged, and it was by a governor ­ but most of all, it was to Vladimir Putin. Is it me, or is politics actually coming back to the imperial court?

To appreciate why Belykh's blog post about something as boring as energy tariffs managed to become one of the top viewed entries on LiveJournal, with some 900 comments as of Thursday, just go back to Putin's televised dressing-down of Kirov region authorities Tuesday over a 40 percent energy hike. Clearly one of his populist measures, Putin's latest harangue had officials looking nervous even before it started ­ the Prime Minister ominously took the time to list through a pile of documents and newspaper clippings in front of him, and in Putin Land that rarely bodes well for his underlings.

"How is it that hot water tariffs grew by 40 percent? Doesn't anyone control these things?" Putin asked. And it certainly didn't help that the man giving the explanation was not the governor, but his deputy, Alexei Kuznetsov, who stammered over the video link up that Belykh was on holiday.

"What day is it?" Putin then asked. "It's the 10th. It's a working day. Please send him a little signal... that it's time to get back to work."

It's no wonder that the remark had media scrambling to figure out why Putin was "attacking" Belykh like this and what it could mean for the precarious Kremlin balance between the liberals and the statists (Belykh, appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev in 2008, was a liberal from the oppositionist Union of Right Forces party). When Putin "sends" officials or businessmen anything ­ whether it's a "signal" or a "doctor," as with the hapless Mechel chief Igor Zyuzin back 2008 (who also failed to show up to a meeting with Putin because he was sick) ­ onlookers often mistake it for the wrath of God. How else to explain that Zyuzin's steel company lost some $6 billion as its stocks plummeted in the direct aftermath of the comments?

But it's 2012, not 1565, and certainly not 1937, and Belykh, to his credit, didn't look like a man bracing for a divine thunderbolt to strike him. Instead, he did what any responsible politician would do: in his LiveJournal post that very evening, he calmly explained that he was taking a long-overdue holiday and that it was his prerogative to do so. That the 40 percent price hike was a problem that had already been resolved, and that his deputy was not informed of this problem because energy tariffs were not on the original agenda for the meeting with Putin. The following evening, he sent a detailed report on the tariffs issue with Putin, which he posted on Livejournal. Though he did not write this to Putin directly, he did muse, publicly, about why the Prime Minister had been informed about the tariff hike, but not that it had already been resolved.

And what of the Prime Minister? On Wednesday, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin wasn't criticizing Belykh for taking a holiday. He was just trying to get everyone to focus after the 12-day break. By Thursday, he informed media that Putin hadn't read Belykh's responses because he was too busy for LiveJournal. What was heartening, however, was that Peskov called the entire incident simply part of "routine work."

If there are no further consequences for Belykh, then the incident offers a glimmer of hope that the rebuttal will indeed send a signal to all the officials out there: there is a much healthier (if slightly more boring) way of conducting politics, that it's ok to argue with Putin if he criticizes you. And, to the law enforcement officials, that Putin's anger is not a signal to take away business and launch criminal probes.

And then, perhaps, instead of the shock and awe tactics often used to govern the country, we'll see the first signs of normal political dialog that the Kremlin says it wants to see.