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Operation Predecessor
Dmitry Medvedev officially assumes the office of president on May 7, and Vladimir Putin is expected to be officially named prime minister the next day. The greatest suspense at the beginning of the Medvedev presidency is whether or not some of the presidential authority will be transferred to the prime minister. Vlast analytical weekly reviewer Dmitry Kamyshev examines how realistic that is.
Both presidents have spoken unambiguously about the redistribution of powers. “The president has his authority and the prime minister his, and no one is suggesting changing them,” Russian President Elect Dmitry Medvedev has said. “We have no need to change anything. The authorities of the prime minister are enough to work effectively in the sphere of responsibility that is given to him under the Constitution,” Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed.
Nonetheless, experts are not convinced that there will be no redistribution of powers. The situation is reminiscent of the issue of a third term last year, when Putin regularly denied rumors that he intended to change the Constitution, and people stubbornly refused to believe him. On the other hand, arguments for increasing the authority of the head of government are convincing. It is completely obvious, for example, that the prime minister will have greater political pull and meaning among the public than the president and he will be simply unable to restrain himself within the traditional role of manager who obediently carries out orders from above.
The only thing that is beyond doubt is that Putin will not be the one to initiate the changes in the Constitution where the authority of the president and prime minister is defined. Most likely, the amendment to the Constitution endorsed by Putin to lengthen the presidential term will be added in the next two or three years, and it would be easy to propose changes in the authority of the two leaders at the same time. But, if the almost-appointed prime minister decides to return to the office of president later, he would have to undo the constitutional changes, which would look exceedingly cynical. Also, if the outgoing president did not care to change the Constitution to give himself more terms, he is unlikely to do so for this less significant problem, which, Vlast's research has shown, can be solved with less radical measures.
What Can Be Changed
To feel completely at home in his new post, Putin needs to do three things.
First, to bring real meaning to the articles of the Constitution that already provide the prime minister with significant authority but that have not been put into real practice yet. For instance, the head of the government, under the Constitution, develops the structure of federal agencies and proposes candidates for deputy prime ministers and cabinet ministers. In previous years, those questions have been decided in the Kremlin, as a rule. In addition, the cabinet of ministers is authorized to supervise the regions, since it is the government, and not the president, that “exercises executive power in the Russian Federation.”
That will be the easiest part for Putin, given his respect and ratings. And no changes in legislation are needed for it. The strict enforcement of those norms of the Constitution could be presented as a renaissance of its true spirit.
Prime Minister Putin's second task is to maintain control over the enforcement agencies, which, according to the law “On the government,” are directly subordinate to the president. As much as Putin swears that his confidence in Medvedev knows no limits, managing the enforcement agencies will only reinforce that confidence. And then the wolves (enforcers) will remain confident that they will be well fed, even as the sheep (liberals from Medvedev's inner circle) remain untouchable. Also, the system of checks and balances the outgoing president put in place, usually thought of as the St. Petersburg enforcers vs. the St. Petersburg lawyers, will remain in place then.
Leaving President Medvedev in direct control of the enforcement agencies could have the effect of a fast-acting bomb. Without a buffer, which Putin acted as during his presidency, the enforcers' well-known distrust of liberals could result in a variety of excesses, from video footage of people closely resembling Medvedev's advisors appearing on television to new Lebedevs and Khodorkovskys being found among them. Medvedev would not even have to make any drastic personnel changes. The expectation of them would be enough to set the enforcers going.
That would not hard to accomplish technically. Article 32 of the law “On the Government,” which places the president in charge of the enforcement agencies, would have to be repealed. The United Russia Party also has the two-thirds majority needed to change constitutional laws. But that might look like overly blatant deprivation of the president's authority. Still, there are two arguments to the contrary. First, the Constitution says nothing about presidential control over the enforcement agencies. Second, there was nothing about it in the first edition of the law “On the Government,” which was passed in 1997. At that time, the head of state simply “directed the activities” of the enforcement agencies with his orders, while the government managed them.
Finally, the third task for him is to make the governors subordinate to him again. The prime minister could do that through a correction to the law “On the General Principles of Organization of the Legislative and Executive Organs of State Power of the Subjects of the Russian Federation.” There is no need fully to remove from the president the right to introduce gubernatorial candidates into the regional legislative assemblies. It would be enough to add to article 18 that the president does so “upon the recommendation” of the prime minister, or at least “in consultation with” him. That is all it would take to shift the process of conciliating gubernatorial candidates from the Kremlin to government headquarters and to make regional leaders aiming at the governorship loyal to the prime minister instead of the president.
An additional measure of control over the regions could be the institution of governmental representatives in the federal districts with the simultaneous elimination of the presidential representatives. No laws would have to be changed for that. The post of presidential representative was created in 2000 by presidential order and the right to create territorial bodies and coordinate the functions of regional authorities was given to the government by constitutional law, which also allows the government to make proposals to the president for repealing the legislative acts of regional authorities that contradict the Constitution and federal law. That can be considered one more instrument of active control.
How Not to Make Changes
The possibility cannot be excluded that Putin will keep his word and not revamp the laws that regulate Russia's system of power. But that does not mean that there will be no redistribution of power then. Besides assigning the government new functions, Prime Minister Putin has a number of comparatively honest ways of taking authority away from President Medvedev. Some of them have already started.
At the end of May, the State Duma will consider the first reading of a bill to make amendments to a hundred and fifty “secondary” laws. The purpose of the amendments, say their authors, chairman of the Statebuilding Committee Vladimir Pligin and deputy chairman of that committee Alexander Moskalets, is purely technical. They will transfer 500 powers from the government to “authorized organs of executive power” and thereby free the government of petty problems such as organizing medical insurance for policemen and approving the list of handicrafts that are supported at the state level.
In reality, the consequences of those amendments will be more serious. They will allow the new prime minister to rid himself of the routine matters that always made up a large part of the government's activities and concentrate on strategic questions. An expected increase in the number of deputy prime ministers from the current four to an assumed eight or ten will serve the same purpose. They will be a team of technical “prime ministers” who will allow Putin to spend his time on what is usually called big politics – developing the strategy for the country's development or further encouraging a political system with a limited number of parties.
Similar “technical” amendments could solve the problem with the enforcement agencies, at least in part. Let the president continue to manage them in full accordance with current law, but the government, or the prime minister directly, could settle the social problems of enforcement personnel. To whom will they then be personally indebted, even if the president does appoint them a new, “liberal” chief?
Another example of creeping authority shift may be the publication last week of an order of Putin changing his last year's order “On the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Activity of the Organs of Executive Power of the Subjects of the Russian Federation.” At first glance, the amendments also look purely technical. The governors now will have to send their annual accounts of their activities not to the presidential administration, but to the government, which will then forward a digest version to the Kremlin. In reality, even though the president will still give the final evaluation of the work of the governors, the prime minister will play a decisive role in their fate from now on as well. The prime minister will now be able to give a recommendation that will ruin a governor or keep him in office.
Finally, Putin has one more way to influence the balance of power in the highest echelons of Russia's leadership. That is a personnel shuffle between the Kremlin and government headquarters. For example, on April 25, the president ordered the creation of the position of press secretary to the prime minister and prime minister's protocol manager, as well as the creation of a department for the preparation of texts for the head of the government's public appearances.
It is natural that two of the three new positions created were taken by people moving over from the Kremlin – the president's first deputy press secretary Dmitry Peskov and head of the presidential reference desk Dmitry Kalimulin. In this case, it is not only important who transfers to government headquarters, but who stays in the Kremlin as well. Thus, it is symbolic that presidential press secretary Alexey Gromov and chief presidential speechwriter Jahan Pollyeva are not among the new appointees. If they (and other high-profile Putin advisors) continue to work at the Kremlin, they will become sort of watchers over the new president. And Putin will retain the possibility of controlling every step Medvedev makes, even without formal redistribution of power.
Dmitry Kamyshev
All the Article in Russian as of May 05, 2008
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