Kommersant
Putin goes for presidency with Popular Front’s modernization program
Vladimir Putin will go to the vote with a promise to make Russia strong and united and to guarantee Russians jobs and prosperity. The opposition says the authorities never fulfill their promises. Experts believe that even the program’s authors will forget it after the election.
United Russia’s presidential election program was ready long before Putin was nominated for president. It was prepared by late September at the Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies, set up in May 2011 to draft the Russian Popular Front’s program.
Like that 135-page document, Putin’s program says that Russia has “defeated separatism and overcome the deep crisis of the 1990s” and can now begin modernization based on the “spiritual unity and integrity of the Russian people,” which must be protected in the media and the Internet.
The program says that personal development is a key priority and promises Russians high living standards while focusing on family values and pledging to build childcare centers, upgrade schools, raise wages and pensions and adjust the housing and utility prices to “the services’ quality and reliability.” The public is to monitor these efforts, while the government will modernize the economy through innovation, double labor productivity within ten years and create “at least 25 million well-paid high-tech jobs” within 20 years. Those who plan to start up their own businesses will be protected “from any encroachments on private property.”
“This is a good middle-class program,” said Mikhail Rogozhnikov,deputy director of the Institute of Social Projects. Its middle-class elements include “the emphasis on freedom, family values, protection of private property and liberalization of law enforcement agencies.” However, the program does not stipulate any mechanisms for its implementation. Rogozhnikov hopes these mechanisms will be made public in the remaining three months of the presidential race.
Yevgeny Gontmakher, a board member of the Institute of Contemporary Development, said that presidential candidates must provide detailed plans for changing Russia, not pay lip service to “strong and united Russia.”
The United Russia program sounds like “the decisions of the Soviet Communist Party congresses or plenary meetings,” which “the people hated and never read,” said Sergei Belanovsky, director for social and economic studies at the Center for Strategic Research. He thinks that even the program’s authors will forget it after the election.
The fight against corruption dominated the 2007-2008 campaign, yet the government and United Russia had not ratified the article of the international convention on corruption which obliges officials and their families to declare not only their incomes but also spending, said Dmitry Novikov, chief ideologist of the Russian Communist Party. They promised to restrain the growth of housing and utility prices, “but they have been growing 30% a year,” said Maxim Rokhmistrov, deputy head of the LDPR party in parliament.
Oksana Dmitriyeva, deputy head of the Just Russia group in parliament, said she has no illusions about United Russia’s presidential candidate and his team and what to expect from them.
Vedomosti
New jobs for former lawmakers
One in every nine members of the fifth State Duma has changed jobs early, because the parliament has ceased to be a decision-making platform and no longer gives immunity.
Apart from passing a record number of bills, as speaker Borys Gryzlov said in his farewell address, the fifth State Duma has also set another record: 51 lawmakers have quit since February 2008 due to new employment. While some of them have clearly advanced their careers, others accepted lower-status posts.
The overwhelming majority were United Russia members. Only 21 members of the fourth Duma quit before term, and 24 left the third Duma.
Many have accepted regional government posts. Five United Russia lawmakers became governors after the house adopted the procedure for regional governors to be nominated by the ruling party. Tula Region Governor Vladimir Gruzdev also hired three deputies from the lower house.
Although that also happened in the past, the fifth Duma is the first to witness a massive flight, even to mid-level regional administrative posts, said Boris Nadezhdin, a third Duma member, adding that executive posts seem preferable for decision-making at a time when the parliament is weak.
Deputy Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has probably made the best career move, getting an appointment as chief of government staff and deputy prime minister. Five more lawmakers became deputy ministers, and several more secured upper house seats.
United Russia lawmaker Valery Ryazansky said he moved to the upper house to “give way to younger party members” who would “renew” the parliamentary group.
This policy is probably one of the main reasons why lawmakers quit before end of term. The United Russia parliamentary party is being renewed by putting non-party members who come from the Popular Front on its election ticket. The current parliament members who have no hope of being re-elected have started looking for other jobs.
Four lawmakers got seats on regional legislatures. Although recently considered a demotion, this career change now offers wider opportunities for influencing policy and making decisions, because regional legislatures currently enjoy more independence than the State Duma, political analyst Alexander Kynev said.
Some prefer making a difference in their own region to being no one among 450 others.
Two United Russia lawmakers quit parliament to head Moscow universities.
Declining authority and shrinking opportunities for business lobby groups to influence important decisions has reduced business executives’ interest in parliament seats, Kynev said. Some of them went back to the companies where they worked before being elected. On the other hand, election tickets contain more business executives than before. They may get more opportunities to influence policy if the next State Duma has more diversity and energy due to an increase in opposition party members.
The cancellation of parliamentary immunity is another reason why business executives are less keen to seek election. A parliament mandate can no longer protect its holder from prosecution.
Gazeta.ru
Russian government loses 1.3 billion rubles on gambling industry
Public spending on the creation of gambling zones has been a failure, the Russian Accounts Chamber has concluded. Gamblers are not flocking to the special zones – it is easier to travel to Minsk or neutral waters near St. Petersburg. Investors fear the closure of the gambling zones and are not investing in building new casinos.
The Russian government spent 1.4 billion rubles on the development of gambling zones in 2007-2010, while the tax revenues from them amounted to only 98.7 million rubles. The Accounts Chamber analyzed the efficiency of the gambling zones project and issued a report that states, “The mechanism for regulating gambling zones has not provided the economic benefits that had been anticipated in terms of attracting investment and the efficiency of public spending at more than 1.4 billion rubles to build the Azov-City gambling zone has negative value.”
After gambling laws were brought into force in 2007, four gambling zones in Russia were designated in the Altai and Primorye Territories, the Kaliningrad Region and on the border of the Krasnodar Territory and the Rostov Region. The government subsequently began spending on infrastructure development and construction of gambling zones, including Azov-City, which swallowed up 97% of the funding allocation. As a result, only two casinos have been built – the Shambala and the Oracle.
The casinos were built using money from private investors. A source in Shambala's management said that the casino cost investors 300-400 million rubles. It started turning a profit in one year but investors refuse to make any additional investments, fearing that the gambling zone in the Krasnodar Territory may be closed.
Gaming Business Association vice president Vladimir Ilyushin believes that the project is not profitable because the state approached it as a political issue.
“The decision to create the zones coincided with the 2006 election campaign, when there was a public outcry about the abundance of slot machines and casinos,” he said. “Politicians promised to fix this problem with new initiatives but they did not account for the economic side of things. The zones are too remote. The government gets tax revenue from each slot machine and roulette table, but there are only two casinos, so not much revenue is forthcoming.”
Ilyushin said that representatives of the gambling business filed complaints for several months to no effect. Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, proposed to amend the existing law so that casinos and slot machine halls may be opened in hotels and tourist facilities but this initiative has also been ignored.
The Accounts Chamber cited the absence of infrastructure in the gambling zones, their poor accessibility and regional administrations' lack of interest in addressing these issues as the causes of poor investor interest in the zones. This concerns the projects that were funded by the state, said a source involved in the Azov-City project.
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