Police and power ministries
Dr. Joshua Tucker of New York University, in the blog The Monkey Cage, pointed out this article from The Washington Post and then pointed to some interpretation from the Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty blog, The Power Vertical.Russian minister says people can hit back at police
Russia's interior minister said on Thursday people should be permitted to hit back at police who attack them without cause, Russian media reported...
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, whose ministry is responsible for the police, said a Russian law that prohibits the use of violence against police in self-defense should be scrapped...
The Power Vertical blog also quoted State Duma Deputy Andrei Makarov as suggesting that the Russian police force be scraped.
You can neither modernize nor reform the Interior Ministry. You can only abolish it. The whole police force needs to be decommissioned and cleansed with help from civil society and human rights groups.
The RFE-RL blog continues, and hints at a political aspect to the situation,
But the current rumblings in high places are likely the result of something other than a sincere desire to reform the law enforcement system...
The latest wave of police scandals come at a time of intense clan warfare in the Kremlin, as security-service veterans or "siloviki" surrounding Prime Minister Vladimir Putin battle for influence with technocrats close to President Dmitry Medvedev over Russia's future political and economic direction...
Political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky told The Moscow Times that Makarov's proposal to disband the Interior Ministry could be interpreted as an attempt by people close to Medvedev to weaken the siloviki: "Makarov is an important ideologist within United Russia, and I’m sure his statement was not made by chance, but organized in circles close to Medvedev. Everybody hates the police today. If he can solve that problem, he can get 90 percent support and also reform the security services."...
An article in The Moscow Times added this bit of information, Debate Over Police Reform Heats Up
Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst with the Russian Academy of Sciences, said he believed the clash within United Russia reflected the widening differences between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“Makarov is an important ideologist within United Russia, and I’m sure his statement was not made by chance, but organized in circles close to Medvedev,” Piontkovsky told The Moscow Times.
Reforming the country’s police, however daunting, is a task that could raise Medvedev’s popularity, he said. “Everybody hates the police today. If he can solve that problem, he can get 90 percent support and also reform the security services.”
Medvedev’s approval rating has been stable at well above 50 percent in recent months, but he consistently trails Vladimir Putin’s popularity. The prime minister had 65 percent approval in a survey released this month by state pollster FOM.
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Labels: politics, regime, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:50 AM
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