|
Electoral
democracy in Russia is beginning to look more and more
like an emergency room, but in this hospital the
physicians do plenty of harm.
Last week, the Kremlin introduced a bill
in the State Duma on canceling direct elections of
regional leaders. Back in 1999, I wrote that bringing
the powerful governors to their knees was the country's
number one economic priority. Removing the arbitration
courts from the governors' control, for example, could
have significantly curtailed the practice of rigged
bankruptcies. This was back when Russia still had a
bankruptcy law, of course.
The governors were brought to heel long
ago, however, and nothing good can now come from Putin's
proposed reform. If the Kremlin has a supply of fresh
faces it plans to install in the regions, perhaps it
ought to put them in charge of the regional offices of
the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service.
Bolstering the executive chain of
command in order to step up security and the war against
terrorism has nothing to do with the governors, however.
In many countries, including some less centralized than
Russia, the federal government is in charge of security.
The FSB is a federal agency, but if elected governors
are interfering with its operations, maybe the problem
is in the FSB, not the governor's office.
Scrapping gubernatorial elections can't
be the last step in this process. Even in regions with
appointed governors, the mayors of many large cities --
Yekaterinburg, Petrozavodsk, Vladivostok -- have held no
less power than their nominal superiors. Many mayors
have beaten the incumbents in gubernatorial elections.
This was back when Russia still had gubernatorial
elections, of course.
In nearly half of Russia's 89 regions,
one-third of the population lives in the region's
largest city. Under Putin's current plan, appointed --
and therefore less legitimate and influential --
governors will have to compete with the elected mayors
of big cities. Scrapping mayoral elections is therefore
the obvious next step in the process. Inductive
reasoning suggests that all remaining direct elections
will be gradually phased out as well.
For supporters of representative
democracy, not all the news in September was bad,
however. Indonesia, a multiethnic country with a
population of some 225 million, rich in oil and
oligarchs, with plenty of local princelings, armed
separatists, Islamist terrorists and advocates of a
return to single-party rule, successfully held its
latest presidential election. The incumbent president,
who had done little to pull her people out of poverty,
to root out corruption in the government or to improve
security, was defeated. Nice to know, isn't it?
Konstantin Sonin is an assistant
professor at the New Economic School/CEFIR.
|
.gif){kind=spacer}