Sitting Pretty
// Reforms in the White House were kept to small, familial changes.
It took Vladimir Putin two weeks from the moment Mikhail Fradkov resigned to leave the government practically unchanged. Vladimir Putin rejected opponents to nepotism in the White House and appointed the wife of Viktor Khristenko, Tatiana Golikova, as the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development. He also refused to accept the resignation of Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. As for the rest the president was guided by the principle of succession: the newly appointed Minister of Regions Dmitry Kozak and Minister Economic Development and Trade Elvira Nabiullina will be accepted as members of one family that no one will offend.
We can only guess what kind of radical purges Vladimir Putin forewent in order to confirm that the majority of ex-Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov’s cabinet is perfectly capable of continuing their jobs. Structural changes in the government lead to another, now fifth deputy prime minister position. In addition to the two first-deputies, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov, and the regular deputies, Alexander Zhukov and Sergei Naryshkin, they added Aleksei Kudrin to the list, who kept his former role as finance minister. Two new federal committees appeared as well, although they can hardly be called administrative reform. They are the committees for youth (whose leader has not yet been announced) and fishing (lead by Andrei Krainy, who was recently appointed the head of the state fishing agency).
Other than Mikhail Fradkov, ex-Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, ex-Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov and ex-Minister of Regions Vladimir Yakovlev also lost their jobs. All three are unsurprising as they had asked the president to accept their resignations in 2007. And all three of them, in some form or another, were objects of public criticism, first and foremost Mikhail Fradkov. Gref was last criticized at a government meeting September 6th for failures to realize state investment programs. Yakovlev’s report about housing construction strategies was removed from the agenda September 20th for its poor quality. Finally, Zurabov answered for the problems with pharmaceuticals from 2005-07. His resignation was demanded by United Russia, A Just Russia, and the Russian population whose antipathy was obviously stirred up by party lobbyists and state media.
The president rejected demands to split the ministry of health and social development into two ministries, just as he did the suggestion to appoint someone close to United Russia who campaigned against Zurabov to a head of department. Tatiana Golikova was one of the authors of the reforms that are associated with Zurabov. The president also rejected claims of nepotism when he appointed Golikova, Minister of Industry and Energy Viktor Khristenko’s wife, and refused the resignation of Anatoly Serdyukov, the son-in-law of the new prime minister.
The appointments of Dmitry Kozak as minister of regions and Elvira Nabiullina as minister of economic development and trade can also be explained as a form of non-change. Nabiullina, as opposed to Gref, is more of an analyst than a manager and according to a source in the government, a part of her responsibilities have been given to the minister of regions. He will also get some of the functions of the finance minister. These new functions will create a new federal-regional relationship. So far these new functions include: regulating interbudget relations, including the Regional Development Fund; oversight of the Federal Special-Purpose Programs; and managing the investment fund. According to our source, this list of new responsibilities is likely to be “supplemented and broadened.” It’s worth noting that turning the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade into a “reform base” without executive powers was suggested by the ex-prime minister in spring 2007.
At 10:30 p.m. it was still not known whether Vladimir Putin had reappointed the rest of the ministers of Fradkov’s government. The database on the president’s website didn’t contain a single entry, including those that had already been announced by the president. Obviously the radical changes in the government called for in part by Zubkov himself a day before didn’t elate the president and the rest of the ministers can consider themselves reappointed. It remains unclear whether or not the president’s delicate address to the cabinet will be compensated in other organs of power.
If that doesn’t happen, the extraordinary address by Putin might just as simply be decoded: no changes, everything stays the way it was before. Whether or not that means that Putin himself will remain in power is, again, unclear. In a sense the president just added Aleksei Kudrin to the list of potential “successors”, making all guessing at this point absurd.
Dmitry Butrin, Maksim Shishkin
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 25, 2007
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