ID :
13793
Fri, 07/25/2008 - 15:08
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/13793
The shortlink copeid
President Medvedev acknowledges deficit of high-rank officials in
MOSCOW, July 25 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has acknowledged this country has a huge problem with choosing candidates for high governmental and even gubernatorial positions.
As he addressed a conference on forming a reserve of cadres for state executive positions, he used a soccer term to admit that "we don't have a substitutes' bench.""Every time we have to scratch our heads over where to find the people for placement to high official positions in the regions," Medvedev said.
Experts believe he seeks to eliminate the existing slant towards the allegiances of high-rank officials and to shift the emphasis inrequirements towards people's professional qualities.
For this, Medvedev proposes setting up a special human resource reserve and to bring businessmen to the sphere of state administrationwhere this is needed.
He said that business and government are separated by a blind wall now.
Analysts say that Russian bureaucracy seems to be heading towards the end of its serene existence. As Medvedev spoke at a visiting session of Russia's State Council in the northwest region of Karelia a week ago, he declared a war on the deficit of computer skills among government officials.
"An official who doesn't have the elementary computer skills can'twork efficiently," he said.
He demanded that user skills be placed on the list of criteria for a regular certification of government employees.
This Wednesday, Medvedev raised the issue of modernization of the governmental elite again and put forward an initiative to set up adatabank on professionals.
"The most promising specialists must be entered in the so-calledpresidential quota," he said.
Medvedev explained that it will be totally impossible to get into this cohort with the aid backstairs influence.
"Decisions on placing people to official positions are sometimes taken through the buddy system - along the principle of personal loyalty or, what's more disgusting, for money when positions are kind of sold," he said adding that he will assess professional achievements of the candidates himself.
Quite obviously, the last drop that overflowed the cup of thepresident's patience was a recent criminal case featuring the people who engaged in the sales of official positions.
Monday, Moscow District Military Court sentenced the culprits in that case to jail terms varying from 7.5 years to 10 years.
The group of culprits included Colonel Alexander Katsev of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Ret., and a group of Russian nationalswithout any particular occupation.
The case also featured eighteen individuals and four organizations as victims. Prosecution said the traders had extorted dozens of millions of rubles.
The judge said, in part, that a businessman living in Moscow had been offered to pay a million euros for the post of the Russian President's representative in the Kaluga region, located some 180 kilometers to the southwest of Moscow.
A certain Mr Makhotin paid 18,000 euros for the post of governor of the southwest Belgorod region.
One more victim was offered to pay for the position of director at the customs department in Novorossisk, a Black Sea port.
The Prosecutor General's Office said the swindlers showed themselves off as relatives of top officials at the agencies of law and order and offered assistance in getting high positions in various parts of Russia.
In the meantime, Medvedev is confident that workers of privatecompanies can also move to state administration offices.
"At this moment, the state stands on one side of the division line as if it were caring for its own purity which it doesn't have in reality, and the business community stands on the other side," he said. "However, there should be no division line between them." The low rate of rotation of state administrators does not pleaseMedvedev either.
"Transfers of talented officials from the regions to the center and vice versa occur very seldom, although we really need this kind ofmobility," he indicated.
Medvedev has proposed the principles of human resource policy that are quite revolutionary for Russia, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, the director of the Center for Studies of the Elite reporting to the Moscow-based Institute of Sociology.
"The authorities have sent a clear signal to society suggesting let's give up the clan principles, the appointments of people mostly coming from Petersburg and from intelligence services and let's hire professionals instead," she told Nezavissimaya Gazeta.
"During Putin's presidency, we had an obvious slant towards loyalty," Kryshtanovskaya believes. "There were seven loyal appointees per each three professionals, but now that a new president holds the office this slant may be eliminated." "It is not ruled out that the time-tested principle of selecting officials who mostly reside in Petersburg or who are personalacquaintances has started faltering now," the Vremya Novostei daily writes.
"I think that's a real claim on the part of Dmitry Medvedev that he'll gather his own team of people," it quotes Valery Khomyakov, the director general of the Council for National Strategy.
"Medvedev would probably feel more comfortable working with his equals in age and this means a part of the corps of regional governors may be replaced," Khomyakov said.
Still, political analysts warn that Medvedev's words should not beinterpreted in terms of his willingness to rid himself of the people he inherited from his predecessor.
"There's nothing anti-Putinist in it and as far as I can see Vladimir Putin would like to give President Medvedev a chance to become a real leader of the country and to create a really new generation of managers capable of running a corporation named Russia," analyst Sergei Markov said.
Experts think Medvedev may pool his reserve of human resources from among business executives, activists of society ruled by law and young career climbers who graduated from Western schools of business.
For getting higher up the career ladder, however, these new managers will have to prove their worth away from the capital city first.
"It looks like the German and Austrian-Hungarian model of the 1920's when officials had to undergo trial testing in the provinces will be implemented here," believes Alexei Makarkin, the vice president of the Center for Political Technologies who is quoted by RBC Daily.
He pointed out a problem inherent in this model, however. It requires years of adjustment and can work efficiently only in a situation of stability - something that Dmitry Medvedev does not have at his disposal at the moment.
Experts say the first major reshuffle of state executives will likely take place this fall. Some of the regional governors will be the first to drop out and then the Kremlin will shift its focus to the federal agencies of executive power.
"After the Operation Successor, Putin just didn't have enough time to get to a detailed shaping of the cabinet and that's why many officials retained their posts, yet personnel reshuffles will begin in the government soon," Makarkin said.
The likelihood of totally unknown people getting into the presidential quota is very small and in all probability the new pool will have quite a few professionals who made their careers during Putin's presidency.
"The president and the prime minister will continue ladling human resources from the same pot for several years to come," StanislavBelkovsky, the director of the Institute of National Strategies told RBC Daily.
As he addressed a conference on forming a reserve of cadres for state executive positions, he used a soccer term to admit that "we don't have a substitutes' bench.""Every time we have to scratch our heads over where to find the people for placement to high official positions in the regions," Medvedev said.
Experts believe he seeks to eliminate the existing slant towards the allegiances of high-rank officials and to shift the emphasis inrequirements towards people's professional qualities.
For this, Medvedev proposes setting up a special human resource reserve and to bring businessmen to the sphere of state administrationwhere this is needed.
He said that business and government are separated by a blind wall now.
Analysts say that Russian bureaucracy seems to be heading towards the end of its serene existence. As Medvedev spoke at a visiting session of Russia's State Council in the northwest region of Karelia a week ago, he declared a war on the deficit of computer skills among government officials.
"An official who doesn't have the elementary computer skills can'twork efficiently," he said.
He demanded that user skills be placed on the list of criteria for a regular certification of government employees.
This Wednesday, Medvedev raised the issue of modernization of the governmental elite again and put forward an initiative to set up adatabank on professionals.
"The most promising specialists must be entered in the so-calledpresidential quota," he said.
Medvedev explained that it will be totally impossible to get into this cohort with the aid backstairs influence.
"Decisions on placing people to official positions are sometimes taken through the buddy system - along the principle of personal loyalty or, what's more disgusting, for money when positions are kind of sold," he said adding that he will assess professional achievements of the candidates himself.
Quite obviously, the last drop that overflowed the cup of thepresident's patience was a recent criminal case featuring the people who engaged in the sales of official positions.
Monday, Moscow District Military Court sentenced the culprits in that case to jail terms varying from 7.5 years to 10 years.
The group of culprits included Colonel Alexander Katsev of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Ret., and a group of Russian nationalswithout any particular occupation.
The case also featured eighteen individuals and four organizations as victims. Prosecution said the traders had extorted dozens of millions of rubles.
The judge said, in part, that a businessman living in Moscow had been offered to pay a million euros for the post of the Russian President's representative in the Kaluga region, located some 180 kilometers to the southwest of Moscow.
A certain Mr Makhotin paid 18,000 euros for the post of governor of the southwest Belgorod region.
One more victim was offered to pay for the position of director at the customs department in Novorossisk, a Black Sea port.
The Prosecutor General's Office said the swindlers showed themselves off as relatives of top officials at the agencies of law and order and offered assistance in getting high positions in various parts of Russia.
In the meantime, Medvedev is confident that workers of privatecompanies can also move to state administration offices.
"At this moment, the state stands on one side of the division line as if it were caring for its own purity which it doesn't have in reality, and the business community stands on the other side," he said. "However, there should be no division line between them." The low rate of rotation of state administrators does not pleaseMedvedev either.
"Transfers of talented officials from the regions to the center and vice versa occur very seldom, although we really need this kind ofmobility," he indicated.
Medvedev has proposed the principles of human resource policy that are quite revolutionary for Russia, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, the director of the Center for Studies of the Elite reporting to the Moscow-based Institute of Sociology.
"The authorities have sent a clear signal to society suggesting let's give up the clan principles, the appointments of people mostly coming from Petersburg and from intelligence services and let's hire professionals instead," she told Nezavissimaya Gazeta.
"During Putin's presidency, we had an obvious slant towards loyalty," Kryshtanovskaya believes. "There were seven loyal appointees per each three professionals, but now that a new president holds the office this slant may be eliminated." "It is not ruled out that the time-tested principle of selecting officials who mostly reside in Petersburg or who are personalacquaintances has started faltering now," the Vremya Novostei daily writes.
"I think that's a real claim on the part of Dmitry Medvedev that he'll gather his own team of people," it quotes Valery Khomyakov, the director general of the Council for National Strategy.
"Medvedev would probably feel more comfortable working with his equals in age and this means a part of the corps of regional governors may be replaced," Khomyakov said.
Still, political analysts warn that Medvedev's words should not beinterpreted in terms of his willingness to rid himself of the people he inherited from his predecessor.
"There's nothing anti-Putinist in it and as far as I can see Vladimir Putin would like to give President Medvedev a chance to become a real leader of the country and to create a really new generation of managers capable of running a corporation named Russia," analyst Sergei Markov said.
Experts think Medvedev may pool his reserve of human resources from among business executives, activists of society ruled by law and young career climbers who graduated from Western schools of business.
For getting higher up the career ladder, however, these new managers will have to prove their worth away from the capital city first.
"It looks like the German and Austrian-Hungarian model of the 1920's when officials had to undergo trial testing in the provinces will be implemented here," believes Alexei Makarkin, the vice president of the Center for Political Technologies who is quoted by RBC Daily.
He pointed out a problem inherent in this model, however. It requires years of adjustment and can work efficiently only in a situation of stability - something that Dmitry Medvedev does not have at his disposal at the moment.
Experts say the first major reshuffle of state executives will likely take place this fall. Some of the regional governors will be the first to drop out and then the Kremlin will shift its focus to the federal agencies of executive power.
"After the Operation Successor, Putin just didn't have enough time to get to a detailed shaping of the cabinet and that's why many officials retained their posts, yet personnel reshuffles will begin in the government soon," Makarkin said.
The likelihood of totally unknown people getting into the presidential quota is very small and in all probability the new pool will have quite a few professionals who made their careers during Putin's presidency.
"The president and the prime minister will continue ladling human resources from the same pot for several years to come," StanislavBelkovsky, the director of the Institute of National Strategies told RBC Daily.
