Transportation Ministry

Misharin

Image 1 of 2

President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to fire Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel won praise Wednesday from opposition politicians, who called for the removal of more regional leaders.

“Rossel should have been replaced long ago,” Solidarity movement leader Boris Nemtsov said, adding that the Kremlin needed to fire more regional leaders who had been in power since the early 1990s, like Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev and Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

“Some of them have outlasted Brezhnev,” he said, referring to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who served 18 years as Communist general secretary until his death in 1982.

Nemtsov’s words were echoed by Communist State Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin, who said “dozens of governors” needed to go.

“They sit in their chairs and do not accept that their time has run out,” Ilyukhin said.

Rossel, 72, has been in charge of the industrial Urals region since 1991, with a two-year break from 1993 to 1995. The governor, whose current four-year term ends Nov. 21, saw support start to erode within United Russia last fall when the ruling party lost a key mayoral election in the region, Vedomosti reported. In the vote Oct. 12, 2008, United Russia’s candidate finished third with just 20.2 percent of the vote in the Nizhny Tagil industrial city.

Political analysts have often placed Rossel among the Yeltsin-era governors who pose a threat to the federal government because of their high popularity at home and said they might be replaced by younger and less independent figures.

Direct elections for the country’s 83 regional leaders were abolished by President Vladimir Putin in 2004. Regional bosses like Luzhkov and Shaimiyev have demanded a return to elections, but Medvedev has vowed to keep the current system, where regional leaders are appointed by the Kremlin and confirmed by regional legislatures.

The Kremlin announced late Tuesday that Rossel would be replaced by Alexander Misharin, a 50-year-old career railway engineer who currently heads the Cabinet’s industry and infrastructure department.

The Sverdlovsk legislature will vote to confirm Misharin on Nov. 17, Interfax reported Wednesday, citing Anatoly Gaida, a senior regional lawmaker. Gaida said there was no doubt that the legislature, which is dominated by United Russia, would confirm him.

Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and governor of Nizhny Novgorod, said he has known Misharin since serving in the federal government in the late 1990s and that he was “a qualified candidate.”

Alexander Shkolnik, a Federation Council senator representing Sverdlovsk and a member of United Russia, said Misharin would give new impetus to the region. “He is a manager of a new type — and very experienced,” he told The Moscow Times.

Shkolnik also confirmed media reports that Rossel might become Sverdlovsk’s second senator in the Federation Council.

“Yes, there are such plans, but the decision must be made by the [regional] legislature,” he said.

The Federation Council has two senators from each region, and Sverdlovsk’s second post has remained vacant since early summer when Senator Yury Osintsev was appointed deputy regional development minister, Shkolnik said.

Nemtsov said a move by Rossel to the Federation Council would show once again that the chamber functioned mainly as a sinecure for has-been politicians.

“The Federation Council had become a sewage pit for politics,” he said.

With the terms of 10 percent of regional leaders expiring by early next year, analysts predicted that Medvedev would replace more governors soon.

In February, the president ousted the heads of the Oryol, Pskov and Voronezh regions and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District.

In a sign that Medvedev is increasing pressure on governors, he told them during a video conference last week to dig up cash for social expenses despite the economic crisis by cutting spending on “palaces” and official cars.

Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov would not comment on which governors might be next in line for replacement.

Primorye Governor Sergei Darkin, who has been identified by analysts as a likely candidate for replacement, is currently running a public relations campaign in national newspapers that highlights economic achievements in his Far East region.

Rossel, incidentally, was the first governor to be replaced under a new system introduced by Medvedev whereby the political party that holds the majority in a regional legislature — invariably United Russia — sends the names of three gubernatorial candidates to the president for consideration.

United Russia’s list for Sverdlovsk contained Misharin, Rossel and the local administration chairman Viktor Koksharov.

Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Center of Political Technologies, said Rossel’s chances for survival had been higher because he had been on the list. “I was a bit surprised to see that he has to go,” he said.

United Russia has also forwarded lists of candidates for the Altai, Komi and Marii-El republics, as well as the Primorye, Astrakhan, Kurgan and Volgograd regions.

Makarkin said Volgograd Governor Nikolai Maksyuta and Kurgan Governor Oleg Bogomolov should be especially worried about their jobs.