Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/04/opinion/edgorbachev.php
<quote>
International Herald Tribune
Time to modernize
By Mikhail Gorbachev
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Russia has elected a new president. I voted, and I urged not only my
friends and family but all citizens of Russia to go to the polls and cast
their ballots, despite the fact that the result was predictable and even
programmed.
The popularity of President Vladimir Putin, who backed Dimitri Medvedev
and then agreed to serve as his prime minister, made the result a foregone
conclusion. Many in our country were critical of this unique feature of
the election.
Voters were not given a real chance to compare the candidates' proposals
on how to deal with the problems facing the country. The field of
candidates itself left much to be desired. And yet, people went to the
polls and voted - another tribute to the Putin phenomenon.
But however im****tant the elections to the Duma and for the presidency
have been in recent months, I am now thinking about what happens next.
We now have a unique op****tunity to take advantage of the stability and
confidence achieved in the past few years and of the favorable
international markets to move decisively on the path of modernization.
This means much more than modernizing our industry. We need to modernize
governance, create an innovative economy, reemphasize education and health
and, as top priority, work to narrow the gap between rich and poor while
fighting corruption and bureaucracy.
In a welcome move, both President Putin and candidate Medvedev focused on
those challenges during the final days of the campaign. I have no doubt
that they will do their utmost. But their efforts alone will not be enough
to succeed.
At all levels - federal, regional and even local - we need major personnel
changes. I am not calling for a "kick-the-bastards-out" campaign. We need
to educate the officials in new ways of solving new problems; even more,
we need to open the way to the young. Unless this is done, many of the
promises made to the people will not be kept, and no PR campaign will be
able to hide that fact.
We know from other countries' experiences that problems of such magnitude
can only be sold in an environment of real democracy, in a civil society
where the government is accountable to the people, and the people are not
afraid to take the initiative.
Some would object to this, saying that we cannot afford to "loosen the
reins," that what Russia needs is not more democratic experiments but
strong authority and a "firm hand."
But strong authority without real sup****t from the people can be impotent.
Putin received sup****t because he correctly identified what people wanted
- restoring stability and rebuilding the Russian state.
We are now facing even more daunting, truly historic tasks, and to
accomplish them we need a new level of feedback between the state and
society.
Which brings me to the point I have been making again and again: To have
an effective system of governance, we must reform our election system. Not
just by tinkering with it, but by making major changes in the mechanisms
of presidential and parliamentary elections and in the election of
governors.
As the first priority, I suggest a return to a mixed system of
parliamentary elections, so people may vote both for party lists and for
individual candidates. People must be sure that their chosen deputy will
work for them. After December's Duma elections, 113 leading candidates
from the lists of the winning parties ceded their mandates to little known
surrogates. One-hundred and thirteen - that's a quarter of those elected!
Voters deserve more respect.
I believe that the threshold for a party's passage to the State Duma
should be lowered from 7 percent to 5 percent, where it was in the 2003
elections, before the legislation was changed in 2006. The governors must
again be elected in a popular vote, instead of the president's choice
being approved by regional legislatures.
The election campaign included some discussion of Russia's foreign policy.
It is now recognized that in recent years Russia has in large part rebuilt
its international standing. With that comes even more responsibility - but
also a need to reconsider our positions on some issues as well as our
foreign policy style.
Russia's partners, too, need to do more to achieve mutual understanding.
Some of them, instead of objective analysis, insist on blaming Russia for
problems real and imagined. And some Western media have become obsessed
with anti-Russian stereotypes and wholesale criticism of our country.
To this I respond: Our people are more democratic than you think, despite
the vicissitudes of Russia's history. This nation endured 250 years of
Mongol domination, followed by serfdom under the tsars and decades of life
without freedom under the communists.
But our people can learn from their past. They will make the right choices
- what to accept and what to reject. This will take time, but Russia has
only one future - democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, is president of
the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies .
</quote>
|
