Campaigning with deregulation
How to win friends and votes in Russia.Putin suspends bribery-driven Russian car inspections for the rest of the year
With elections less than a year off, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has found an easy way to give Russia’s car owners a gift that could be worth upward of $1 billion: He did away with auto inspections for the rest of 2011. And the best part of it is that most of the money won’t be coming out of the government’s coffers.
Who’ll pay? The traffic police and employees of the state-controlled company that performs the inspections. Both agencies have the authority to issue certificates, and both have devised inspection routines that are so onerous and unpredictable that cars somehow rarely pass them. Drivers, instead, grease palms — and the certificates magically appear…
Russians love their cars, and they hate the traffic police — the most visible and annoying embodiment of the arbitrary corruption that pervades the country — with a passion. Bribery and extortion have mushroomed here in all fields, and Russians show signs of finally getting fed up, which is not good news for Putin, Medvedev or the ruling United Russia party. But was this really a blow against the system?…
Of course, Putin’s decree looks good to voters and puts some money in their pockets, for now. But Kanaev wonders whether the change will turn out to be temporary or whether the government will decide to turn over the responsibility for shaking down car owners to more dependable bureaucrats?…
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Labels: elections, policy, politics, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:39 AM
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