Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

Municipal elections 297appointment of mayors to the State Duma and Federation Council.Aleksandr Sokolov, the Mayor of Khabarovsk, noted that ‘a vertical chain ofcommand is, of course, not a bad thing, but then one needs to stop dreamingof initiatives on the part of the public, of possibilities for self-government,and of engaging everyone in active constructive endeavours’. 45However, it would appear that the direct appointment of mayors by regionalgovernors has been put on hold until after the 2007–8 round of parliamentaryand presidential elections. At a session of the Congress of Local and RegionalAuthorities of Europe which took place in Moscow in November 2006, topUnited Russia officials spoke out against the direct appointment of mayors.At the meeting Igor Shuvalov rejected the appointment of mayors statingthat such an initiative was ‘an attempt to role back municipal reform in thiscountry.’ The law was branded as a ‘private initiative’ rather than an officialpolicy of United Russia. Shuvalov’s position in turn has been supported byDmitry Medvedev, one of the favourite candidates to succeed Putin. 46One of the key changes to power relations within the regions is the factthat Putin since January 2005 has the power to directly appoint regionalgovernors (see Chapter 5). This has led to a situation whereby governors areviewed by the public more as representatives of the centre in the regionsrather than vice versa. Regional chief executives may have been grantedmore powers over mayors but now that they are appointed from above, theyhave lost much of their authority and democratic legitimacy. In contrast,directly elected mayors can still claim to have a popular local mandate togovern. It may be for this reason that we have recently witnessed a concertedattack on the probity of mayors. Governors have launched a series of criminalinvestigations against mayors accusing them of squandering their cities’budgets and engaging in corrupt practices. Thus, for example, in Krasnodarregion, over thirty mayors were forced from office during 2002–4, after beingcharged with trumped-up criminal offences. 47In December 2006 Aleksandr Makarov, the Mayor of the city of Tomskwas arrested and imprisoned after police accused him of taking bribes ‘inexchange for lucrative construction contracts’. He later suffered a heartattack when police allegedly found large sums of money in his home.Makarov rejects all the charges brought against him and he has lodged acomplaint with the European Court of Human Rights. As Bigg notes, this isnot an isolated incident. Over the period 2005–6 ‘a dozen mayors in Russia[were] detained and taken to court on corruption-related charges’. 48 AsOreshkin notes, often the charges against the mayors are ‘simply ridiculous’.Thus, for example, the Mayor of Arkhangel'sk, Aleksandr Donskoi,fell from grace in February [2007], when prosecutors indicted him onfour counts – faking a university diploma, using it to obtain a secondhigher education, using budget funds to pay for his son’s bodyguards,and authorizing a company to build a shopping centre without governmentclearance. 49