Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 25 – Earlier this
week, Minchenko Consulting suggested that two governors in the Southern Federal
District and North Caucasus Federal District (in Karachayevo-Cherkessia and
Krasnodar Kray) may soon be replaced, but Dmitry Balovsky argues that the Kremlin
is increasingly reluctant to take such steps lest it rock the boat.
The director of the Moscow Institute
for Social-Economic and Political Research argues that at present there are no
plans for replacing governors in these regions lest shifts spark protests or
unsettle the region in advance of the 2021 elections to the Russian State Duma
(akcent.site/mneniya/5957).
That does not mean that changes are impossible,
Balovsky continues; but the closer the time of the Duma elections approaches,
the more reluctant the Kremlin is likely to become given the sensitivities of
the local populations and the near certainty that any change would unbalance
the local political elites and cause problems for the all-Russian vote.
Gubernatorial elections are planned
for 2021 in North Ossetia and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, and if Moscow does want
to make a change in either, it is likely to do so next year to give the new
incumbent time to build up his authority. But the analyst says that the
probability of change is far greater in Karachayevo-Cherkessia than in North
Ossetia.
There simply have been too many
scandals in the former that have attracted the attention of people in Moscow to
exclude the possibility of a change there even if many in the capital recognize
that any shift there now could create problems in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment