Thursday, October 4, 2018

September Election Results haven’t Changed Kremlin’s Cadres Policy, APEC Concludes


Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 3 – Both the weakening of public support for many of its candidates and the loss of several of them have been widely expected to produce changes in the Kremlin’s choice of governors away from those who simply follow the orders of the center toward those with experience in or at least a talent for more public politics.

            But a new study by the Agency for Political and Economic Communications (APEC) concludes that these election results still have not had any significant impact on the Kremlin’s choices or on the ranking of governors as compiled by the agency, the Nakanune news service reports (nakanune.ru/articles/114407/).

            “Despite a number of predictions,” APEC says, “the Kremlin still has not made a key bet on people with experience in public policy” and who thus might be expected to do better in more competitive elections and hasn’t rejected its recent approach of appointing outsiders as governors, people who might be expected from the outset to be less popular than locals.

            “Among the new appointees, as before, a significant share consists of people who have succeeded in working in federal structures (Kazbek Kokov in Kabardino-Balkaria, Sergey Morozov in Astrakhan Oblast, and Oleg Kozhemakov who has become provision head of Primorsky Kray),” the ranking agency says.

            This suggests, APEC concludes, that the center feels confident that is has no need to change “the basic principles of its cadres policy.”  Nakanune for its part asked its readers for their reaction: “A majority of them said that the Presidential Administration most likely did not notice threats” to the center as a result of the regional voting.

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