Kalimatov Consolidates Power, Makes It Clear He Looks to Moscow not Ingush People

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 12 – Ingush head Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov has combined his administration and that of the Ingush prime minister in the name of economy but in fact giving him tighter control over the republic government than was the case before (ingushetia.ru/news/m_kalimatov_uprazdnil_apparat_pravitelstva_ri_dlya_isklyucheniya_dublyazha_funktsiy/).

            Simultaneously, he has signaled he will follow Moscow’s orders rather than the the Ingush people by saying his most important task is to carry out Vladimir Putin’s directives (ingushetia.ru/news/m_kalimatov_ozvuchil_zadachi_novogo_pravitelstva_ri/) and underscoring that by making his first official visit not to an Ingush body but to the republic office of the FSB (ingushetia.ru/news/m_kalimatov_posetil_torzhestvennoe_meropriyatie_po_sluchayu_25_letiya_obrazovaniya_pogranichnogo_upr/).

            Not surprisingly, many Ingush opposition figures are outraged. Magomed Mutsolgov, a Yabloko leader in Ingushetia, says that what Kalimatov is doing shows that “the federal center has not learned anything” and that its administrative methods “are not only not constitutional and not effective but long out of date” (kavkaz-uzel.eu/blogs/342/posts/39555).

            According to him, “the appointment of the latest outsider as prime minister of the republic has generated among the population a negative reaction,” as has Kalimatov’s “demonstrative” failure too talk about the most important issues of the Ingush people: the republic’s territorial integrity, mass repressions, and the detention of so many prisoners of conscience.

            “The people are tired of the appointment of traitors and silent executors of the will of the federal center. It wants that the head of the republic will stand in defense of the people, their fights and lawful interests … We don’t want all this. Allah can testify that the people of Ingushetia wants peace and flourishing,” not more orders from outside that ignore its interests.

            Another commentary today, this one by Ayup Gagiyev, the head of the Ingush Constitutional Court, will only add fuel to the fires of opposition in the republic. He says that the Yevkurov regime’s efforts to “justify his act of national betrayal” by signing the border accord with Chechnya do not have the precedents the former republic head claims.

            According to Gagiyev, the agreements signed between Ingushetia and Chechnya in 1993-1994 were reached in an entirely different and far more open way and thus cannot be legitimately invoked to justify the behind-the-scenes deal Yunus-Bek Yevkurov made with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov (6portal.ru/posts/в-сложных-юридических-и-исторических/).

            That argument puts the chief justice at even greater odds with the current governments in Magas and Moscow and will encourage more Ingush to object, quite likely with new protests, what the previous republic head did and what the current one won’t discuss or modify.