| The State Duma of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug approved Yuri Neelov as head of the region The federal authorities spent just over a month re-electing all the governors in the “matryoshka” Tyumen region. Last Friday, the State Duma of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug approved the current governor, Yuri Neelov, as head of the region. Thus, all three heads of the subject of the federation (the “matryoshka”, in addition to the Tyumen region itself, includes the Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrugs) are endowed with powers under the new scheme - appointed by the president and approved by parliament, and not directly elected by the population of the region.
Let us recall that in early February, contrary to all the forecasts and expectations of the Yamal authorities, Vladimir Putin reappointed not Yuri Neelov, whose powers were coming to an end, but the Tyumen governor Sergei Sobyanin, who had not completed his term of office for a year. In the Tyumen region, where the topic of uniting three regions into one entity remains very relevant, such a personnel move was considered the beginning of consolidation, the next stage of which should have been the resignation of the governors of Yamal and Ugra, who had been resisting Sergei Sobyanin’s unification plans for several years. The prosecutor's office of Ugra added grounds for such reasoning by initiating a number of criminal cases involving persons from the inner circle of the governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Alexander Filipenko. But for the latter, everything ended well: at the end of February, the president introduced his candidacy to the district Duma. The deputies quickly and unanimously voted for it. For Yuri Neelov, things were more complicated.
Firstly, unlike Mr. Sobyanin, who wrote a statement of confidence to the president, and Mr. Filipenko, against whom the mayor of Surgut Alexander Sidorov was a nominal opponent, the competitor of the Yamal governor was a well-known businessman in the district, the general director of a subsidiary “ Gazprom - Tyumentransgaz - Pavel Zavalny. However, he refused to participate in the “elections,” telling reporters that he was satisfied with his current job. Then the presidential envoy to the Ural Federal District, Pyotr Latyshev, suggested vice-governor of the Tyumen region Vladimir Yakushev as an alternative to Yuri Neelov. And although at all the inaugurations of newly appointed governors, Mr. Neelov repeated the words: “What’s the rush? We will all be there!”, those around him claim that the head of Yamal was noticeably nervous because of the long silence of the federal authorities.
The deadline for the president to nominate a candidacy for the post of governor of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug was March 4, but on that day the deputies did not receive any documents. The long-awaited presidential message with a proposal to elect Yuri Neelov arrived only on International Women's Day, March 8. Now Mr. Neelov plans, like his reappointed colleagues, to reorganize the district administration. According to the governor's plan, it will become a government and will replicate the structure of the federal cabinet of ministers. In the economic sphere, the emphasis will continue to be on oil and gas production, but with the obligatory condition for the formation of new sectors of the economy. The inauguration of the governor of Yamal is scheduled for March 16. Mikhail VIUGIN, Ekaterinburg |
|
