Russian President Vladimir Putin made constitutional changes on Monday designed to increase his personal control of the regions and parliament, saying the government needed "strengthening" because it had failed at Beslan in its fight against terrorism.
He told regional governors, Cabinet colleagues and senior bureaucrats: "We have not achieved visible results in rooting out terrorism and in destroying its sources.
"The organizers and perpetrators of the terror attack are aiming at the disintegration of the state, the break-up of Russia."
But some analysts said his changes, which amounted to the biggest single shakeup of his four years in power, would not help fight terrorism, but further strengthen his already tight grip on power.
Putin said he wanted to appoint the currently elected regional governors himself, subject to vetting by the weak regional assemblies, and he wanted all members of parliament elected by proportional representation.
At present half the Duma, the lower house of the federal parliament, is directly elected by constituencies, the rest according to the party vote. The new system could in theory give smaller parties seats in in parliament, but the current rules let only parties with more than 7 percent of the vote take seats, disqualifying most.
Putin made two other announcements of more apparent relevance to the Beslan disaster.
He made his head of administration, Dmitri Kozak, his personal envoy to the North Caucuses region, which includes North Ossetia and Chechnya, and appointed Vladimir Yakovlev as minister for reconstructed nationalities, a post designed to ease ethnic tension in the south which he abolished when be became president.
Putin hinted at plans for a Russian version of the US Department of Homeland Security, established after Sept. 11, saying: "We need a single organization capable of not only dealing with terror attacks but also working to avert them, destroy criminals in their hideouts, and if necessary, abroad."
In a rare mention of the social causes of terrorism, he hinted at the huge amount of unemployment and poor health of the North Caucuses.
He said terrorism's roots lay in "unemployment, in insufficiently effective socio-economic policy, and in insufficient education ... The district's unemployment rate is several times higher than Russia's average ... All of this provides fertile soil for extremism to grow."
Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment, said the changes were the "logical extension" of Putin's desire to have vertical control of the regions.
"The Constitution still says that the Russian people are the source of power, but [now] there is nothing left in the Constitution to that effect," Shevtsova said.
The changes would not make him a dictator, however, since he valued his invitations to the Group of Eight industrialized countries, and Russian authorities were too corrupt to be authoritarian.
Vladimir Pribyovsky, head of the think tank Panorama, said: "Terrorism is being used as a pretext to change the federal structure of the country."
He said that the planned change to the Constitution might lead to Putin trying to alter the Constitution to allow himself a third term at the elections in 2008.
Before re-election in March, Putin ruled out constitutional change.
Also See Story:
Covering the Beslan hostage drama an exercise in frustration
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS