Nezavisimaya Gazeta, an influential Moscow-based daily, interviewed several prominent political analysts on the matter.
Says Stanislav Belkovsky of the research Institute of National Strategies:
"What's going on now will send this country into a chaos even within this year-the elite that is being driven off the helm will spare no efforts to sabotage the reform and snatch up everything that stays unpilfered to this day. As we know from experience, Putin no longer has any political reservists except the men he was backing at regional elections. Men like Zyazikov, Ingush president, have by now proved themselves sheer bunglers. If this country gets another 89 men of his kind, the entire ruling structure will be paralysed."
Dmitri Oreshkin of the Mercator group:
"This attempt to stop democratic change and put an administrative vertical in its place will offer a mere illusion of management. It's a U-turn to the administrative patterns of Soviet times. More than that, Putin puts trust in the brass hats and military control arrangements. Meanwhile, practice has shown soldiers to cope with regional matters worse than civilians. He will make only such people governors whom he knows and trusts. That means a new corporation of military bureaucracy will come up."
Georgi Satarov of the Indem foundation:
"The government system we shall have with direct gubernatorial ballots abolished can be academically described as 'referendum dictatorship'. That will be a dictatorship masked by mock elections. The change of gubernatorial election patterns will clash with several constitutional clauses. In particular, Clause 55 prohibits passing laws that may limit currently existent civil rights-while the abolition of direct gubernatorial elections will cut the public election right."
Mikhail Krasnov, JD, expert on the constitutional law:
"The Constitution does not explicitly stipulate the direct gubernatorial ballot. However, the pattern the President is offering clashes with the Constitution. I am sure on that point. The federal authority is here invading a field of constituent entities' exclusive competence-the federal centre is out not merely to determine gubernatorial appointments but to take part in the respective procedure. Now, it is regions' prerogative to form their ruling bodies, with the governor representing the executive authority."
