A governor who made headlines for purportedly taking offense at a theatrical performance of "Cinderella" and banning it has landed a cushy job at the Audit Chamber.
President Dmitry Medvedev has nominated former Kamchatka Governor Alexei Kuzmitsky to the Audit Chamber along with incumbent auditor Alexander Piskunov, the Kremlin said Friday.
The candidates now have to be approved by the State Duma, which selects six of the chamber's 12 auditors; the rest are installed by the Federation Council. No date for the Duma vote was set.
Kuzmitsky resigned as governor in February. Although he officially handed in his notice, analysts believe it was a formality masking the Kremlin's disapproval of his policies, which failed to solve the poor region's economic and social issues. Kuzmitsky, 44, a Kemerovo native who studied in St.
Petersburg, had served as deputy governor since 2005 and became the region's head in 2007. He was publicly scolded by both Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last year over his failure to resettle residents from dilapidated housing into new homes. An odd crackdown on "Cinderella"
in January further damaged Kuzmitsky's standing, with local politicians and actors accusing his office of banning the play over a scene in which the king sets back the clock by an hour to keep
Cinderella at the ball. The scene was seen as making fun of an unpopular Kremlin-backed initiative to bring Kamchatka's time zone an hour closer to Moscow. Kuzmitsky denied ordering a ban on the play.
