Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Ban on Protests Damaging to Regional Authorities
Moscow City Hall announced yesterday it did not consider it necessary to tighten the law on public gatherings. Previously, officials claimed protest rallies caused losses to the city’s economy. But police violence in dispersing opposition rallies in the regions seems to be doing more damage to the authorities’ reputation.
Alexander Gorbenko, deputy mayor of Moscow, conceded that the law on rallies should be reviewed. He was commenting on the words by another Moscow official, Pyotr Biryukov, that the losses incurred by the municipal budget due to opposition protests ran into millions. In a radio Ekho Moskvy interview, Gorbenko did not deny that the authorities were not satisfied with the current law but said there was no urgency in amending it.
Passions over getting clearance for new protests in Moscow have subsided, but now they are sweeping the regions, where the local authorities have refused to sanction rallies.
Nizhny Novgorod became the center of the scandal on Monday morning, during the trial of 85 people detained for taking part in the unsanctioned march For Fair Elections. The defendants complained of the humiliating conditions they were held in, without food or access to sanitary facilities. The judge sentenced them to several days in prison. In response to a reasonable remark that they had been held in custody already, he said the detainees had formally been free.
“Nizhny Novgorod is one of the cities with the worst problems in this regard,” Pavel Chikov, head of the interregional human rights organization Agora, said in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Experts are forecasting a growth in protests outside Moscow because most ballot count violations took place in the regions.
However, what concerns the people in the regions most is not so much police brutality against protesters. Local authorities have started their assault on the media. In Azov, Rostov Region, Puls TV network is to go off the air on Wednesday. Its editor-in-chief Alexei Sklyarov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that problems began as soon as he decided to head the local voters’ league and his network began to provide coverage for protest rallies.
In St. Petersburg the opposition is planning to hold a new rally on March 24. The application was filed on Monday. In March, the number of detained protesters in St. Petersburg reached an all-time high of 500 people, Boris Vishnevsky, deputy of the city legislature, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. He concludes that police violence has greatly escalated. “I have seen it for myself. I was detained too,” he said. It appears the regional authorities are making the same mistake Moscow made in December, when mass detentions led to an increase in protests.
A new online resource OVD-Info is gaining in popularity. It publishes all information on people arrested for political considerations. The resource may prove useful both in the capital and in the regions. Anyone wishing to report a detention can contact the website’s hotline.
Vedomosti
Russia’s Pension System Turns into Pyramid Scheme
Russia’s pension system may soon turn into a classic pyramid scheme, say an ex-finance minister and a government economic expert.
Growing life expectancy coupled with the shrinking economically active population promises Russia an economic collapse, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Yevsei Gurvich, head of the Economic Expert Group, write in an article in the Voprosy Ekonomiki journal. The growth of life expectancy is compensated by higher taxes levied on the younger generation, so that ultimately each generation pays more than its predecessor while receiving more than it paid. This is a classical pyramid scheme.
Higher taxes or increased budget allocations are the easiest way to resolve the pension crisis. Russia used it in 2010. Money transfers to the Pension Fund grew from 1.5 percent of GDP in 2007 to 5.5 percent in 2010, and contribution rates went up from 20 percent to 26 percent. According to this scheme, by 2050 the contribution rate should either grow to 70 percent, or budget transfers to the pension system should be increased by 10 percent of GDP (the total budget spending amounts to some 20 percent of GDP).
Increased taxes and transfers lead to an economic crisis because growing taxes discourage economic activity, but without increases pensions will become smaller, which pensioners will not tolerate. Pensioners are the most active voters and by 2050 their share will grow from one-third to a half of the electorate.
Coordinating the interests of several generations is both a political and economic challenge, Kudrin and Gurvich write. These issues can be resolved by adjusting the retirement age to the growing life expectancy, but it is an unpopular measure.
According to the WTO, the median age of population in the 55 surveyed countries is growing commensurately with the chances of spending these later years in good health. By 2030, the health, working capacity and life expectancy of Russian citizens aged 65 will be the same as those of 60-year-olds now. The retirement age is regularly raised in Denmark, for example, to adjust it to the growing life expectancy.
The pension policy should correspond to human behavior throughout the life span, Kudrin and Gurvich write. The government’s optimal response to the ageing of population would be to increase the retirement age without increasing the contribution rate.
The authors write that by 2025-2030 the retirement age should be 60-62 for women and 62-63 for men. Such an increase in the EU countries, together with other measures, would increase the pension burden by 2.3 percent of GDP by 2060, instead of 8.7 percent projected if no measures are taken.
The Health and Social Development Ministry plans to adjust the size of pensions to the length of service, said Minister Tatyana Golikova. Under this formula, pensions will be raised 8 percent every five years, said Tatyana Omelchuk, an expert at the Academy of the National Economy: “It would be more honest to raise the retirement age. It is the only option provided we want to decrease the pension system’s deficit while raising pensions.”
Argumenty i Fakty
Russian Armless Drummer Who Played with Scorpions Lives in Poverty
Ruslan Nurislamov, an armless drummer and an Internet star, lives on a meager pension. He knows only too well that the golden carriage always turns into a pumpkin at midnight.
Ruslan, 25, lost both of his arms in an accident as a child when he and several friends explored an unlocked transformer booth outside their building. The boy survived a 6000 Volt electric shock because he was wearing rubber boots. But his arms had to be amputated almost at the shoulders.
Since his father and brother died, Ruslan and his mother have lived a quiet life. “We are two pensioners,” he jokes. He could have sought an escape from this monotonous retirement with alcohol, as many do, but he didn’t. He went to a local club and began learning to play drums. At first he tried fastening the drumsticks to his stubs with scotch tape but they didn’t hold. Later his friends bought him some elbow pads and attached special pockets to them.
“Sometimes a person needs to lose a limb to feel like a human being,” he said. “Many live like animals – eat, drink and reproduce. But I had time to think things over. I realized that everything happens for a reason. We must accept it and go on. And on I went,” he added.
He did not just learn to play the drums but became a real musician, experts say. Later Ruslan and his friends set up a rock band, Eskimo. Eventually someone wrote an article about him and posted a video online. That brought him national recognition with a record number of hits on YouTube and a visit to the president. After that he was visited by several government officials who promised to find him a job.
People recognize him on the street, seek to meet him and write to him. “Some call me a ‘celebrity.’ Funny. I received my housing bill when I came home from Moscow and found out they stripped us of the disability discount. I quickly put this celebrity business out of my mind and began thinking how to pay my rent,” he said.
But Ruslan’s is after all a success story. After he had a chance to play with the legendary German band, the Scorpions, in a TV show, he woke up an Internet star. The music community announced a fundraising campaign and bought him a professional drum kit. Hundreds of people reached him on social networks just to “shake his virtual hand” and wish him luck.
He became an icon for the despairing and the depressed. At all times, people need heroes like the armless drummer from the Urals. A bodybuilder who does a 120 kilo chest press may be strong but someone who overcomes pain, fear and uncertainty is stronger still.
“I just thought, if I survived a 6000 Volt shock, this had to be meant this way. Probably by God. So I thank Him for it. I chose life. I’m happy,” Ruslan says.
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