Russian President Vladimir Putin made constitutional changes on Monday designed to increase his personal control of the regions and parliament, saying the government needed "strengthening" because it had failed at Beslan in its fight against terrorism.
He told regional governors, Cabinet colleagues and senior bureaucrats: "We have not achieved visible results in rooting out terrorism and in destroying its sources.
"The organizers and perpetrators of the terror attack are aiming at the disintegration of the state, the break-up of Russia."
But some analysts said his changes, which amounted to the biggest single shakeup of his four years in power, would not help fight terrorism, but further strengthen his already tight grip on power.
Putin said he wanted to appoint the currently elected regional governors himself, subject to vetting by the weak regional assemblies, and he wanted all members of parliament elected by proportional representation.
At present half the Duma, the lower house of the federal parliament, is directly elected by constituencies, the rest according to the party vote. The new system could in theory give smaller parties seats in in parliament, but the current rules let only parties with more than 7 percent of the vote take seats, disqualifying most.
Putin made two other announcements of more apparent relevance to the Beslan disaster.
He made his head of administration, Dmitri Kozak, his personal envoy to the North Caucuses region, which includes North Ossetia and Chechnya, and appointed Vladimir Yakovlev as minister for reconstructed nationalities, a post designed to ease ethnic tension in the south which he abolished when be became president.
Putin hinted at plans for a Russian version of the US Department of Homeland Security, established after Sept. 11, saying: "We need a single organization capable of not only dealing with terror attacks but also working to avert them, destroy criminals in their hideouts, and if necessary, abroad."
In a rare mention of the social causes of terrorism, he hinted at the huge amount of unemployment and poor health of the North Caucuses.
He said terrorism's roots lay in "unemployment, in insufficiently effective socio-economic policy, and in insufficient education ... The district's unemployment rate is several times higher than Russia's average ... All of this provides fertile soil for extremism to grow."
Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment, said the changes were the "logical extension" of Putin's desire to have vertical control of the regions.
"The Constitution still says that the Russian people are the source of power, but [now] there is nothing left in the Constitution to that effect," Shevtsova said.
The changes would not make him a dictator, however, since he valued his invitations to the Group of Eight industrialized countries, and Russian authorities were too corrupt to be authoritarian.
Vladimir Pribyovsky, head of the think tank Panorama, said: "Terrorism is being used as a pretext to change the federal structure of the country."
He said that the planned change to the Constitution might lead to Putin trying to alter the Constitution to allow himself a third term at the elections in 2008.
Before re-election in March, Putin ruled out constitutional change.
Also See Story:
Covering the Beslan hostage drama an exercise in frustration
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese