Translated material
“There will be no auction of positions”
Boris Ebzeev became president of Karachay-Cherkessia
For the first time, Karachay-Cherkessia experienced a change of top official without scandals or shocks. The inauguration of the new President of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Boris Ebzeev took place yesterday at a ceremonial meeting of the republican parliament and took only 40 minutes. Mr. Ebzeev himself explained the lack of pomp: “I received many proposals to hold the ceremony magnificently, to organize a big holiday, but if there is mourning in your brother’s house, then you cannot have a holiday in your house. We share the grief of the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who suffered "heavy losses as a result of Georgian aggression."Mourning did not prevent the presidents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia Eduard Kokoity and Sergei Bagapsh from coming to the meeting - this was their first official visit to Russia as heads of state entities recognized by it . Apart from them, there were no foreign guests, and even the certificate was presented to Mr. Ebzeev by Deputy Plenipotentiary Representative Nikolai Fedoryak instead of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Southern Federal District, Vladimir Ustinov.
58-year-old lawyer Boris Ebzeev was born in Kyrgyzstan, where the Karachay people were exiled by Stalin in November 1943. He studied in Saratov, received a doctorate in law in 1989 and since 1991 worked as a judge in the Constitutional Court of Russia. On August 5 of this year, almost a month before the expiration of Mustafa Batdyev’s presidential term, Dmitry Medvedev, through the mouth of Vladimir Ustinov, introduced Mr. Ebzeev’s candidacy for consideration by local parliamentarians, and they immediately approved him in office.
Now in the history of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic there are two leaders elected in direct presidential elections, and two appointed from the center, and the Karachay-Circassian experience teaches that it is safer to appoint. The first head of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic after its separation from the Stavropol Territory, Karachay Vladimir Khubiev, who worked as the prime minister of the former autonomy, was appointed head of the administration of the republic by decree of Boris Yeltsin. In 1995, Mr. Yeltsin appointed him simply as the head of the republic in accordance with the new constitution of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic.
The presidential elections of 1999 and 2003 were heated in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, both times in two rounds. The first elections in 1999 almost ended in interethnic clashes: Karachai Vladimir Semenov and Circassian Stanislav Derev fought for the presidency, and the Russian community, then still politically active, divided its sympathies between them. To avoid clashes, internal troops had to be sent to the Karachay-Cherkess Republic. Kremlin-backed General Semyonov won the election in the second round. But in the Caucasus that year there was still a war - a few weeks later Dagestan broke out, followed by a second war in Chechnya.
In 2003, Mr. Semenov lost the second round of elections to the Chairman of the National Bank of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic Mustafa Batdyev, and after the official results were announced, the rally raged for a long time on the main square of Cherkessk. But these were still flowers compared to the formal revolution that happened a year later: in the fall of 2004, the murder of seven young Karachays at the dacha of the then son-in-law of the new president, Aliya Kaitov, caused a real rebellion. Several thousand people broke into the Government House, and only the arrival of Russian Presidential Envoy Dmitry Kozak saved Mr. Batdyev from immediate expulsion.
The reason for the murder was the participation of the president's relatives in the redistribution of assets: Mr. Kaitov was just negotiating the acquisition of a controlling stake in a large paint and varnish plant named after. Tsakhilova. However, the rebellion started by the families of the victims was supported by supporters of the former president, Vladimir Semenov. In addition, there is evidence that militants - Islamic fundamentalists, of whom there are plenty in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, were already ready to intervene in the matter.
The timely arrival of Dmitry Kozak saved the situation from inevitable disaster, but Mr. Batdyev was no longer able to fully govern the republic. The opposition, which loudly demanded his departure, controlled the Supreme Court of the republic, the municipality of Cherkessk and some of the less important settlements. Only towards the end of his term did Mr. Batdyev manage to oust his opponents and even achieve some growth in economic indicators, but he was never able to retain his position.
His successor Boris Ebzeev uttered several words at his short inauguration that were revolutionary for the modern North Caucasus. “I don’t know such a profession - brother, relative, friend, classmate or, say, a good person,” he amazed those gathered. - When they come to me and say - we want to recommend a good person to you, I invariably answer one thing: I don’t know such a profession - “a good person”. In Karachay-Cherkessia there will be no purchase or sale of ranks and titles, there will be no auction of certain positions.”
More than one person sitting in the hall at that moment thought that relatively recently a newly arrived official would not have had his head cut off for such a manifesto, because the auction of positions and the selection of personnel among relatives are integral elements of Caucasian political culture, just like plastids under the bottom of the car. But Boris Ebzeev apparently feels like a politician of a new era. He is, in fact, the first governor independently selected by Dmitry Medvedev. His appointment is the penultimate in a chain of personnel changes in the republics of the North Caucasus, which began in 2005 with the replacement of North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov with the new head of Taimuraz Mamsurov. Of the seven mountain republics, only Ingushetia has so far avoided rotation.