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[Second Issue of the Day]
#1
Moscow Times
June 25, 2002
Putin Takes 'Do No Harm' Approach
By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
Staff Writer
Whether or not President Vladimir Putin thinks of himself as a doctor for Russia's still sickly economy and society, his answers to 36 questions at a news conference Monday revealed that the Hippocratic principle "do no harm" is one of his key approaches to everything from the Kremlin's uneasy relationship with governors and the Russia-Belarus Union to the privatization of land and Middle East politics.
After the first public speeches of his presidency, some observers counted how many times Putin used the word effektivno, or effectively, to describe how he wanted the government and economy to function after the unruliness of much of the 1990s.
On Monday, another word could be added to the list of Putin's favorites: vredno, or harmful, and its synonyms. That is how, he said about a dozen times during the two hours and 10 minutes of the news conference with hundreds of reporters, he did not want reforms to be carried out.
Sometimes it was just a figure of speech. But mostly, the "it would be harmful" phrase appeared when Putin wanted to warn against any radical solutions and to advocate an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, approach.
Putin projected his mission as alleviating the harm that was done to Russia over the past decade without undoing President Boris Yeltsin's work.
"To go back would be harmful," Putin said when a Nizhny Novgorod reporter suggested that city and neighborhood officials should not be elected but appointed by governors. The main question, he said, is "where to stop" in forsaking democratic principles for effectiveness. "You are thinking -- and I feel that your position quite coincides with your governor's position -- let the master appoint everyone," Putin said. "Not bad. But then let another master appoint all the governors.
"I don't think this is right. We have passed this station. Maybe the train has gone too fast. Maybe it would have been worth stopping at some point.
"But that's the way it worked out. To go back is harmful. The question is how to organize [municipal] self-government. I think that the governors should be elected. To take away [democracy] further would be harmful."
It would be equally "dishonest, wrong and harmful" to blame the regional leaders for resisting Kremlin-led reforms, as a journalist from the Far East suggested. Putin agreed that governors were resisting bringing regional legislation into line with federal laws. But the government "has managed to persuade the leaders that it is for the good of the country," he said.
Or take the controversial issue of privatizing agricultural land. Yeltsin signed a decree proclaiming the land reform, and regional laws sprang forth. Now, Putin said, when a federal law on buying and selling farmland is adopted, the final word on beginning or continuing land privatization will be left up to the governors -- but in accordance with unified federal rules. Yet before this takes place, a cadastre should be formed to take an inventory of land plots. "This takes time," Putin said. "There should be no rush, no fuss about it. That would be impermissible and harmful."
Yeltsin, who once offered regions as much sovereignty as they could handle, and his legacy were one of the main themes of the news conference. Over the weekend, Yeltsin traveled to Belarus and criticized Putin for pouring cold water on a plan he had signed with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to form a Russia-Belarus Union.
Putin said the separation of Belarus and Russia was "not only ungrounded but harmful and ruinous for both the Belarussian and Russian people," but "we have to proceed from what we have."
Putin said that while he personally would like to see the unification of the two countries under a single government, it would be "absolutely wrong and mistaken" to ignore Belarus' desire to retain its sovereignty and have veto rights in a unified country. As a solution, Putin proposed a model of the European Union, in which the European Parliament's decisions have to be approved by national parliaments and signed by presidents to become law.
He said he would meet with Lukashenko before the end of June to discuss their differences. "It's time to stop chewing the cud as we have been doing for 10 years and make up our minds about whether we want [the union]. There has to be a clear legal procedure that may be put into practice."
Answering questions about his feelings toward Yeltsin, Putin gave a polite but stern rebuff to Yeltsin's remarks in Belarus. "He has his opinion on the subject, I have mine," he said. "Today I am in charge of the country, and I bear the political responsibility for its current state of affairs and for its future.
"We have respect for the first president, we hear his opinion and take it into account when we make a decision. But we act on our own."
Turning his attention to crime, Putin warned that the fight would be a long one and that simply blaming police corruption is "wrong, dishonest and harmful, because then we don't see the roots of crime." The root of crime is in social and political issues, and the state has to undertake a "complex of measures" to solve the problem.
There are harmful things to be avoided in foreign policy, too, Putin said. While condemning Palestinian "terrorist attacks" in strong terms, Putin stressed that removing Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, as some Israeli and U.S. politicians have suggested, would be "dangerous and mistaken."
The one time during the news conference when Putin paused at length to gather his thoughts was when a St. Petersburg journalist asked how Russia could benefit from its increased international activity. Since Russia's main goal is modernizing its economy, Putin finally answered, hostile relations with the industrially developed countries would be harmful. "It is impossible to develop effectively without being fully immersed into global economic relations," he said.
As Putin went into overtime and took over running the news conference from his press secretary Alexei Gromov, both reporters and president became visibly relaxed. Putin called on the "young man in glasses," who happened to be a reporter from the Naryana Vynder (Red Tundra-Dweller) newspaper in the Nenets autonomous district, and was asked why three prosecutors in a row had lost their jobs after they summoned Governor Vladimir Butov for questioning. Putin said he was not familiar with the matter and promised to raise it with the prosecutor general later in the day.
When Olga Sushkova, a reporter from Kursky Vestnik, asked about the danger of a "Putinization of the country" -- her term for Putin's growing personality cult among bureaucrats and his portraits appearing on everything from nesting eggs to Easter eggs -- the president said he was against it. But he added, "You cannot do much about it."
Answering a question from a Krasnodar journalist about Governor Alexander Tkachyov's much-criticized policies restricting immigration from the Caucasus, Putin made one of his strongest "do no harm" statements of the day. Regulating migration according to federal law is necessary, he said, but going beyond is "a great danger" for a multi-ethnic and multi-faith country like Russia. "It is absolutely impermissible," he said. "The road to hell is paved with the best intentions. Let's never forget this. If we set out on this slippery road, we will not preserve the country."
By holding the news conference for several hundred Russian and foreign reporters, Putin made good on a promise last year to hold another broadly accessible news conference. He said the goal of the event was to wrap up the political season, which ends in a few weeks when government officials go on summer vacation, and explain the government's activities to the people.
"Of course it is a staged performance," said Alexander Vlasov, a newspaper publisher from Kaliningrad. "But we have to give credit to the director and his professionalism. Something has moved forward in the country. How often does a fellow from the Red Tundra-Dweller get to ask president a question? That's great."
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