| Dmitry Kozak begins “cleaning up” the White House Plastic surgery on the face of the current government is almost complete. Just the other day, the last significant event in the restructuring of the domestic bureaucracy will take place. The White House apparatus and the structure of government commissions will be modernized. As Prime Minister Fradkov recently said, “beyond recognition.”
In fact, Mr. Fradkov has already worked personally with the White House commissions. Reduced them significantly. And he headed three, in his opinion, main ones: on the military-industrial complex, on integration (where from now on there will be no differences between the European Union and the CIS) and on competitiveness. True, after some hesitation and despite the obvious Kasyanovist touch, it was decided to call the last commission the Council on Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (under ex-Prime Minister Kasyanov there was simply the Council on Entrepreneurship).
As for the structure of the government apparatus itself (particularly radical authors of the current administrative reform called the apparatus a “shadow cabinet” and its actions a “hardware revolution”), here the prime minister and his White House colleagues are forced to copy the Kremlin. Both in big and small ways. So, for example, former ministers become assistants to Mr. Fradkov, deputy ministers become heads of departments. Both in the White House and in their own ministries.
The prime minister, as an experienced bureaucrat and a kind-hearted person, is trying to retain staff. He personally meets with deputy heads of government staff, heads of departments, not to mention prominent deputies of key ministries. And he hopes. “Sooner or later,” he stubbornly insists, “the whole country will know them.” The only question is whether the bureaucrats, accustomed to a high position, will want to change their idea of their own status, as the current leaders of the country did for them. Will, for example, Arkady Dvorkovich and Mikhail Dmitriev, who today can rightfully be considered one of the best specialists in the administrative field, remain in German Gref’s department? (There are persistent rumors in the government that the head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade will nominate Andrei Sharonov and, optionally, either Yuri Zhdanov or Dmitry Savelyev for the prime minister’s signature as his deputies - accordingly, the remaining deputies will “go under the knife”).
However, ministerial passions, apparently, will lose some of their urgency this week. They will be overshadowed by passions inside the White House itself, which until now have been mostly of an “undercover” nature. Here the painful process of transferring from deputy ministers to department directors, advisers and assistants will begin. Formation of the declared “top hundred”.
In this case, the head of the government apparatus, Dmitry Kozak, will apparently have a much more difficult time than the prime minister - he will have to “optimize to two” his own deputies, of whom there are now eight. Of course, Mr. Kozak, without any particular regrets, can reduce the salaries of the deputies appointed under Mr. Kasyanov - there are five of them. But Mr. Kozak himself appointed three deputies - we are talking about Andrei Yatskin, Sergei Naryshkin and Alexei Golovkov. Demoting immediately after appointment is bad manners, retaining three deputies is a precedent, a violation of the convention. In general, an unaffordable luxury. So one of Mr. Kozak’s new appointees will still “go under the knife.” Evil tongues say that it will most likely be Alexei Golovkov - as the most independent, and also because he is not from Kozakov, not from St. Petersburg, etc. Mr. Golovkov will most likely remain the head of the secretariat of the only Deputy Prime Minister - Alexander Zhukov. Vera KUZNETSOVA |
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