Staunton, December 12 – The Kremlin
does not yet know what to do with Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn, the increasingly
unpopular head of the Buryat Republic, according to a Siberian commentator; and
one of the possibilities under consideration in Moscow is eliminating his
position by amalgamating Buryatia with the predominantly Russian Irkutsk
Oblast.
Such an outcome would provoke
outrage in Buryatia, as officials in Moscow are certainly aware, and the fact
that amalgamation is being considered at all highlights not the Kremlin’s
strength but the problems it faces both in Buryatia and in Siberia more generally
at the present time (newsbabr.com/bur/?IDE=141046
and asiarussia.ru/news/10304/).
Babr’s Maksim Bakulyev says that his
sources in the Presidential Administration “confirm” that Nagovitsyn’s standing
there is “extremely weak;” but they also indicate that Moscow has not reached
any final decision about whether to retain or fire him or deal with the situation
in some other way.
Since beginning his second term as
head of Buryatia, Nagovitsyn has rapidly lost support both in his republic and
in Moscow, the commentator continues. “There are many causes for this.” He is
viewed as an outsider, he’s made mistakes in imposing his own people in top
jobs, and he’s driven his former proteges like Ulan-Ude mayor Aleksandr Golkov
into opposition.
Moreover, Bakulyev continues, the
Buryatia head hasn’t been successful in lobbying Moscow for the things Buryats
need, including a cut in electricity charges that might have saved the republic
and the republic government from collapse.
To try to save himself, Nagovitsyn
has played the nationalist card in order to “frighten the Kremlin by the growth
of separatist attitudes in the republic,” but he has done so in ways, such as
expanding ties with Mongolia, that have in fact “led to a sharp growth of
national self-consciousness of Buryats,” that make him a liability to the
center rather than an asset.
In fact, the commentator argues, “only
one factor is preventing Nagovitsyn’s overthrow: the lack of an acceptable
candidate to replace him as head of the republic.” Nationalistic Buryats have
been lobbying for Vyacheslav Markhayev, the ethnic Buryat KPRF senator from
Irkutsk oblast.
But “from the position of the Kremlin,
having a second ‘red’ head of a region in Siberia as well as well as a very
public nationalist, is hardly acceptable,” although the situation has developed
to the point that Moscow now accepts that the next head of Buryatia must be an
ethnic Buryat.
All this puts Moscow in a bind. If it forces him to retire this month, then “with
a high degree of probability,” he will run again in 2016 and quite possibly
win, given that “in the course of nine months, the opposition will not be able
to prepare an adequate and recognized candidate for whom a majority of the
population of Buryatia would vote.”
At the same time, the collapse in
local support for Nagovitsyn is a real problem for Moscow. If it leaves him in
place until the end of his term in2017, then “the result of direct elections
[at that time] could turn out to be unpredictable for everyone including for
the Kremlin.” Consequently, Moscow is almost certainly going to try to “force
events.”
And one tactic it may employ is to
eliminate the need to find a new head of Buryatia by amalgamating Buryatia with
Irkutsk Oblast into “a single Baikal kray,” an idea that has been circulating
in Moscow “already for several years.”
Taking that step would solve other problems as well, including those
connected with KPRF Sergey Levchenko’s becoming Irkutsk head.
If the republic and region were
combined, Moscow could have a free or at least freer hand in imposing a new
leadership entirely. And thus this move is possible, all the more so because,
Bakulyev says, “elites in Buryatia and Irkutsk Oblast have been given a signal
not to conclude long-term agreements with Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn.”
No comments:
Post a Comment