Main page / Economy /

Kudrin's expert team ready to oppose and engage authorities on all vital policy issues

Author: Irina Kozlova Section: Economy

Issue: May 2012, Vol.7, No.5

Tags: Kudrin

print-friendly version

A group of Russian intellectuals headed by former deputy prime minister and ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has created a Civil Initiatives Committee, a nonpartisan, non-governmental body, to serve as a means for developing and supporting ideas aimed at accelerated transformation of Russia, while openly challenging the actions of the authorities regardless of positions or the personalities behind such policies.

In addition to Kudrin, the Committee also comprises prominent figures from all fields of human endeavors – politics, economy, business, culture, science and journalism. Suffice it to say that the composition of the Committee fully underscores the vastness of the intellectual potential of the experts behind the center that plans to embark on objective opposition to the Russian political authorities on all issues — ranging from domestic topics to foreign economic and geopolitical policies aimed at catapulting Russia into worthy position befitting its status and potential on the world stage.

Some of these experts include Igor Yurgens, the director of the Russian President’s Institute of Contemporary Development (INSOR), the Kirov Region Gov. Nikita Belykh, OPORA Russia President Sergei Borisov, Russia’s National Anti-Corruption Committee Chairman Kirill Kabanov, Dmitry Oreshkin, the president of the Mercator Group and leading researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geography and former Union of Right Forces Co-Chairman Leonid Gozman. Others include famous TV journalists Vladimir Pozner and Nikolai Svanidze, film director Yuly Gusman, Yevgeny Yasin, the head of the Research Department at the Higher School of Economics, and his daughter Irina Yasina, a well-known economist and director of the Regional Journalism Club, as well as other renowned politicians, public figures and opinions shapers.

Obviously, in terms of membership, intellectual potential, social importance and international reputation, the Kudrin’s Committee can compete with the administration of the incumbent Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, or the composition of the incoming Kremlin administration of the President-elect, Vladimir Putin for generating breakthrough ideas aimed at economic, social and political transformation of the Russian society. Yurgens gave a hint about this aspect of the Committee’s functions, when he noted that though “our Committee is not going to be a kind of a parallel government, it will, however, still attempt to forge its own opinions on all the important problems being solved by the Russian president and the government.”

“Our Committee is a non-political union of professionals drawn from all key sectors with the sole goal of defining and implementing the best case scenario for Russia’s further development.”

According to the Kudrin’s team, the new Committee is not a streets protest-based, but rather experts-based group, which, similarly to the people participating in various protests, will demand changes for the better. However, unlike the street protest actions initiated by the non-system opposition, the Committee will seek the achievement of the same goals in other ways. Notably, by proposing to the authorities other professional points of view and alternatives to the policies being implemented by the Kremlin and White House or to the government’s officially adopted course on further development of the country.

When speaking at the official opening of the Committee, Kudrin said that the recent elections had demonstrated that Russians wanted to participate in solving the urgent social problems and have a real voice in the selection of a better course for further development of the country. The new public structure will promote such goals via involvement in the enactment of the laws aimed at achieving positive changes in the country. “We are a nonpartisan organization, and therefore, are ready to cooperate with the representatives of all parties. Today, our Committee is a non-political union of professionals drawn from all key sectors, including economy, science, education, healthcare and culture, with the sole goal of determining and implementing the best scenario for Russia’s further development,” he said. “We want to live in a country, where public interests override those of the authorities that are benefiting from the obsolete political system and lopsidedly monopolized raw commodities-based economy; we want to live in a country, where equality for everyone, liberty and honest competition rule are the norms, in a society, where there is no corruption.”

Speaking on the Committee’s mission objectives, Yurgens noted that the new structure was created in an attempt to address the demands of the middle class and other categories of citizens that did not believe in the election results, as well as to address what is happening in society in general that is causing justified dissatisfaction among the citizens.

“We asked Kudrin, as one of the best Russian financial experts, to think about the real situations in the Russian economy, as well as budgetary and fiscal policies after the election because the Strategy-2020 Program and Putin’s election campaign articles have failed to clarify or adequately these concerns,” the expert said, as he explained why Russia’s leading experts and public figures have decided to unite their efforts behind the Kudrin’s Committee mission objectives. The intention of Kudrin’s Committee to adjust the Kremlin’s political course during Putin’s de-facto ‘third presidential term’ is seen as a response

to the latest events in the country’s political life, street meetings, the demands and expectations of civil society to pluralize all aspects of life in the field of politics, economy and business, as well as social and cultural spheres.

According to the members of Kudrin’s Committee, right-wing liberals are dissatisfied with lots of issues. Moreover, there are threats of further deteriorations in external political and economic environment and destabilization in the domestic economy. Numerous promises made during the election campaigns will become an additional heavy burden on the state budget. To avoid this scenario, leading Russian experts and public figures asked Kudrin to launch “a large-scale initiative to develop an alternative course to the government’s policies, as nobody, including prominent economists, political scientists, civil society activists and the intelligentsia, is satisfied with the Kremlin’s current course of national development.”

The Committee members said their operations and mission objectives will be funded only from private funds or financial aid coming from exclusively domestic Russian sources, including both individuals and legal entities. This is being done to avoid being labeled as a structure being financed by the West, notably, the U.S. State Department, because the authorities and their allies always use such allegations to publicly discredit political opposition and its leaders as well as other people expressing their disapproval of Kremlin’s policies and actions. “We are going to rely on the support originating from Russian businesses or individuals only, and will not accept any funding from abroad,” Kudrin said.

Similarly, the Committee is also going to be equally independent of the Kremlin and will not coordinate its activities with any state agencies to avoid being tagged ‘an agent of the Kremlin or the Russian White House’ tasked with influencing the independent intellectuals, who always have their own points of view on all issues relating to the development of Russia, which are often different from those of the state. “I did not discuss the idea of creating the Committee either with the President-elect, current head of our state, and representatives of the President’s administration or members of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. This was my independent decision. The Committee was established on the basis of my own foundation, and it is not going to be a legal entity,” Kudrin said.

To achieve its goals, the Committee has defined the problems of uttermost importance to be jointly and urgently solved by all the progressive forces in society. These include the establishment of the Court of Justice, one of the first top-priority goals, which means ensuring the actual independence of the judicial system, including the electivity of presiding judges in all Russian courts. Other goals involve the establishment of a Local Self-Government School in charge of searching for, studying, analyzing and propagating best practices as well as ensuring the publicity of the state budget to be based on such principles as transparency and public discussion, adoption and implementation at all levels.

Other priority goals also include the establishment of a Transparent Police Force that will ensure the publication of detailed criminal statistics and public audits as well as the establishment of the Civil Solidarity intended to strengthen horizontal liaisons in the society, including the development of a volunteers system. The Committee will also oversee in-depth reformation of the public health system to make it actually accessible to every needy citizen. In other words, the Committee intends to transform the ‘current wild market of paid medical services’ into modern medical system capable of rendering high-quality services to all citizens. The Committee will also implement the ‘equal start’ principle, meaning accessibility of high-quality education to all classes of the population.

When implementing these goals, the Committee is prepared to openly oppose the authorities, regardless of positions or the personalities behind such official policies, and will offer public discussions, civil expert assessments, and alternative options needed to address the most important political, economic, and social problems and challenges facing the country, which the official authorities are trying to address.

The members of the Committee demonstrated their readiness to openly oppose the authorities as early as during the maiden press conference devoted to

the creation of the new structure. Notably, they said they are not sure of the possibility of fully implementing the election promises made by the president-elect. Specifically, Kudrin said he opposes some of Putin’s initiatives mainly because of the expenses needed to implement them will impose an overwhelming burden on the local economy. “Almost all of the election promises are expensive. According to our estimates, the cost of the executions will hover around 1.5% of the GDP in the first year and rise up to almost 7% of the GDP in the final years of their implementations,” said the former finance minister, who has a reputation of being a financial conservative in the field of state expenses. “It is impossible to accumulate such enormous expenses. It is necessary to think about the budget sources needed to meet these expenses and ways to optimize them. I don’t know any of such ways or how these can be done.”

Kudrin and his counterparts believe in Russia’s future and its chance to occupy a worthy position on the international stage, saying the Committee’s activities will promote this mission objective. On the other hand, a thorough understanding of the inevitable need to reform the society, notably, its obsolete political system, will help accelerate the achievement of these goals. The ultimate goal is to make the political system, which is the principal agent of changes and transformation, the locomotive driving all other state control systems and functions, meet the expectations of the Russian people and not the authorities as well as the requirements of a civilized state of existing in the 21st century.

“There are all the resources and capabilities for Russia to become one of the largest global leaders. However, the obsolete political institutions and rigid state machinery have become insurmountable hindrances’ to these goals,” the Committee members said in their official charter manifesto. “Today’s Russian society is developing at a much faster rate than the state, which means that changes in the country are absolutely inevitable. The key objective for all of us, including the members of the Committee, is to make such public changes more efficient, much safer and acceptable to all the Russian people, irrespective of their political leanings, social standings and other factors.”