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Putin Willing to Know More Than President about Governors
Vladimir Putin continued yesterday the adjustment of executive vertical from the Kremlin to the government. The president inked two decrees for this purpose. The first document transferred to the Kremlin the authority of accumulating the data on quality of governors’ work, while the second one extended the vertical to the level of local self-governments, committing municipal authorities to report to the governors.
The efficiency of the work of local self-governments will be judged under 30 criteria. The decree doesn’t specify the body to be in charge of the evaluation or the punishment to be suffered by the chiefs of municipal bodies with negative mark. The only recommendation is that the governors should provide grants to municipalities “to encourage attainment of the best indicators.”
In essence, Putin extended to local self-governments and governors the pattern that he introduced a year ago for relations of the Kremlin and the governors. That ruling was signed past June and set forth 42 criteria of evaluation, without mentioning any evaluating bodies or punishment, but committing the governors to annually report to the president on their activities by May 1.
The efficiency of past year’s decree will be clear no sooner than on May 1, once the reports of the governors are received. The general expectation was that Dmitry Medvedev would sign a new ruling after his inauguration of May 7. But Putin outpaced the successor yesterday – the current president not only inked the decree on municipal bodies but also corrected his previous ruling, the one on the governors, obliging them to submit the reports to the cabinet instead of the presidential administration.
The general opinion of analysts is that, in the absence of real political competition, the rule of law loses significance, while the rule of authority gains momentum. So, Putin apparently hastened to close at cabinet (i.e. at himself) the evaluation of governors’ activities and, through them, the evaluation of activities of the chiefs of municipal bodies.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 30, 2008
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