MEDVEDEV'S GRADUAL THAW CONTINUES

COMMENTARY

 by Gordon Hahn

Even before the inauguration of Dmitrii Medvedev as Russias president I broached the idea of a likely thaw under the somewhat new administration, basing that view on both historical precedents and contemporary imperatives (Gordon M. Hahn, “Is A Russian Thaw Coming?,” Russia: Other Points of View, April 18, 2008).  Six weeks later, I reported some of the recent new signs of a coming and indeed already real if crawling thaw (Gordon M. Hahn, “More Signs of a Possible Thaw Under Medvedev,” Russia: Other Points of View, June 2, 2008).  A month later, I wrote that there would be a political thaw under Medvedev barring any unexpected upheavals: “Medvedev is on a leash.  If he learns to stay on the sidewalk and not wander into the traffic, Putin will gradually lengthen and very gradually remove that leash, fade into the premiership and perhaps leave it in a second Medvedev term.  In lieu of a major jihadist attack, an assassination, or an overly aggressive Western Russia policy, an economic and political thaw will likely develop at the pace with which Medvedev takes control.  Such a thaw will be very gradual – like watching an iceberg melt – but it will melt.” (Gordon M. Hahn, “The Politics of Unleashing,” Russia Profile, July 1, 2008).

Even a recent editorial from the eternally biased and cynical Washington Post was uncharacteristically objective and even positive about the value of the Medvedev speech’s straight talk about Russia’s enormous problems and challenges, even as it stuck to its standard disdain and cynicism (“Mr. Medvedev's Glasnost,” WP, November 14, 2009).  It even stole our approach of applying the perestroika model to measure expectations about the possible pace of reforms, noting “it's worth remembering that the political transformation that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month began with another Kremlin leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking unaccustomed truths about his country. A lot of people then believed that Mr. Gorbachev didn't mean it, or had no ability to act on his words; they were proved wrong. Let's hope that those of us who have doubted Mr. Medvedev's capacity to reverse Russia's descent into authoritarianism and aggression will be pleasantly surprised as well.”  

What makes the WP so nervous that they are trying to cover their posterior?  What indicates that my thaw prognosis is increasingly being proven accurate?  Quite simply, it is the albeit snail-paced but irrefutable progression of political and other reforms under Medvedev’s watch as expressed in his first presidential address on November 5th, 2008, the subsequent year of legislation, and his second presidential address two weeks ago. 

Let’s take an area that perhaps will be the most difficult sphere of the political system to reform – the election and party systems.  In his first state-of-the-nation address last year, Medvedev also outlined a series of modest reforms to the political system in these areas, and those proposals were rapidly written and passed into law.  He took a small step towards promoting opposition and smaller political parties.  At his behest the State Duma passed into law several of Medvedev’s proposals. Parties garnering more than 3 percent of the vote but failing to meet the 7 percent threshold will now be granted several seats in the Duma and regional legislatures.  The size of deposits and the number of signatures needed for registering a new party were reduced.  Finally, parliamentary parties should have guaranteed access to state media.

Outside the election and party systems, Medvedev took steps to decentralize power by transferring more powers to regional legislatures and local councils and away from governors.  The Federation Council, the upper house of the federal parliament, is now composed of regional representatives from among those persons elected to the regional legislatures and local councils, instead of one representative each from region’s governor or republic’s president and the regional assembly.  Thus, this reform put an end to executive branch representation in the Federation Council which was a violation of the separation of powers.  In another decentralizing reform, those political parties winning regional elections, rather than the federal district presidential envoys and the presidential administration, would now propose candidates for governor in the regions, and regional legislatures were also empowered to remove regional governors and republic presidents.  To be sure, the positives above were somewhat negated by Medvedev’s proposal – rushed to passge by the Duma and Federation Council – to lengthen the presidential term to six years.  This risks the tandem remaining in power, in one combination or another, forever. 

Medvedev adopted a gradualist approach to expanding freedom of speech and information.  He proposed that technological innovation, in particular extending Internet access, should be the modality by which these freedoms are secured.  Medvedev also has supported nongovernmental organizations and opposition media outlets like Novaya gazeta, and the Duma followed up by streamlining registration rules for NGOs. 

Finally, Medvedev also took a series of steps to root out corruption including the adoption of a law on corruption, an amendment to the civil service law requiring officials and selected relatives to report their income and property holdings.  He also had MVD chief Ruslan Nurgaliev institute a badly needed re-education program for police that includes instructing them on ethnic and religious toleration and proper conduct in relating to citizens. 

Although the overall effect of these reforms hardly sufficed as a significant redemocratization of Russia and many of the problems they addressed persist, in each case the rolled back aspects of Putin’s more authoritarian system and ensured that as a turn to significantly free and fair elections begins, there would be a greater effect on electoral and policy outcomes.  They were also important as a signal about what direction Medvedev might want to move. 

Now, after a year of minor political reforms, Medevedev is proposing a second year of minor political reforms.  But this year’s reforms build upon and are slightly more substantial than last year’s reforms producing a more robust cumulative effect. 

Medvedev proposed several initiatives that run counter to the Putin agenda.  Pushing political system reform forward, he promised to ease parties’ participation in elections by removing the requirement that they collect signatures.  As a first step, he offered to eliminate the rule in regional elections for parties that have no State Duma deputies but have them in the regional legislature.  Recall that when the requirement to make deposits was scrapped, the opposition complained this actually closed a path to elections, allowing them to avoid presenting the 200,000 signatures needed for registration.  Election commissions, dominated by United Russia often claim that mistakes in signature lists exceed 5 percent of opposion party lists in order to exclude opposition candidates from races.  Opposition parties also complained they already needed to show a significant following under laws requiring a certain threshold for membership numbers and number of regions in which thay are able to maintain an organizational presence.  Similarly, he fulfilled his promise to address the Duma parties complaints of fraud in the Moscow and other regional elections on October 11th calling for legal amendments to put a halt to illegal manipulations of Russia’s leaky early voting and absentee ballot procedures and practice.  Thus, Medvedev has responded to several of the opposition’s chief complaints regarding Putin’s party and election system counter-reforms.  The president also took a step towards lowering the threshold of 7 percent of the vote for parties to secure seats in parliamentary elections, agreeing that the threshold of votes in regional legislatures should be no more than 5 percent.  He also proposed that regions should adopt a law mirroring the federal law he pushed through earler this year guaranteeing equal access to state media for parties with seats in the State Duma and less significantly that a new law should equalize or at least limit the disparity between the number os seats in regional legislatures.

Outside the political system, Medvedev took more bold shots at two key elements of the Putin era: state corporations and jihadi terrorism in the Caucasus.  He ordered Putin’s government to quickly prepare proposals on transforming some and privatizing other state corporations and on guaranteeing the transparency of the few to remain by March 1, 2010.  Building on his $900 million economic assistance program for Chechnya, Medvedev announced six-year, $1.1 billion assistance package for Ingushetia to provide jobs.

Although many of these policies were likely agreed with Putin himself, they nevertheless amount to a rollback of his legacy. 

Over time, these increments of minor reforms of the political system will produce major reform at a threshold that will mark a redemocratization of Russia’s political system.  The most essential step in this process will be the enforcement of laws that forbid cheating and falsifying election results whether through manipulation of early and absentee voting mechanisms, vote counting, or recording ballot tallies.  Indeed, until this is done, re-democratization will remain limited, and the overall system’s tenor will be largely stealthily authoritarian. 

The soft authoritarian system remains potentially vulnerable to ‘colored’ upheavals.  Since Medvedev’s next round of political reform legislation will not be ready until after the March 2010 regional elections, he and the system are likely to be subjected to another embarrassing and even potentially dangerous ‘election’ day like October 11th.  In order to balance this negative effect, Medvedev may decide to intensify the reform agenda in the new year. 

However, Medvedev remains politically weak.  His lack of a large political team or resource-base to support his reform agenda and the possibility that Putin will be unwilling or unable to stop the bureaucracy and state oligarchs led by deputy premier and hydrocarbon energy boss Igor Sechin and military industry boss Sergei Chemezov can scuttle his reforms.  In order to overcome the enemies of reform, Medvedev has been appealing – most notably, in his October “Forward Russia!” internet article – to the liberal intelligentsia, the entrepreneurial middle-class, and young people to rally around him.  In this, he is repeating the early years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost.  Gorbachev’s glasnost, its open discussion of social ills, economic deficiencies, and hidden aspects of Soviet history sparked mobilization ‘from below’ in society and the emergence of informal democratic (and nationalist) groups.  Now, Medvedev’s ‘glasnost’ and repeated calls for reform, in particular a battle against corrupt bureaucrats and state oligarchs, are beginning to inspire a few courageous figures in society to step forward and demand change.  The emergence of police Maj. Alekasandr Dymovskii’s corruption charges against his MVD outfit in Novorossiisk and the responding flood of similar appeals by other police are the harbinger of things to come.  Whether such developments will snowball now or strike a fear of instability and a backlash on the part of the state ‘buroligarchy’ that Medvedev (and Putin) will be unable to control remains to be seen. 

Gordon M. Hahn – Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), and numerous articles on Russian and Eurasian politics.

Comments

[Ian Robertson]

I have lived and worked In Russia since 1988. Don't be fooled by Medvedev's rhetoric, he is only a puppet the power stays with Putin and will.

Ribka 1

[alexandre LATSA]

Ian

i think Medevedev is no puppet.

Russia is being driven by two guys (poutine and medvedev) .. But it's normal for a country which has on his flag the doubled headed eagle ;)