Translated material
Face of Mordovia
The Kremlin allowed Nikolai Merkushkin to become head of the republic for the fifth time
Today, the President of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin will be reappointed at a specially convened session of the State Assembly of the republic. His candidacy for empowerment of the head of the region was submitted to the regional legislative assembly by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. There is no doubt about the positive outcome of the vote. The inauguration ceremony is expected to take place on the same day.Thus, resignation is not obligatory for all regional leaders who took the helm of power during the Yeltsin era. Let us recall that Mr. Merkushkin is precisely a representative of such an “old guard”: he has headed Mordovia since 1995, winning elections three times - in 1995, 1998 and 2003. And in 2005, Nikolai Merkushkin, without waiting for personnel decisions from the center, himself raised the issue of trust with the then president of the country, Vladimir Putin, and was reappointed for the fourth time. Thus, tomorrow the Mordovian president begins his fifth term in governing the republic.
In accordance with the law, United Russia proposed candidates for the post of President of Mordovia to Dmitry Medvedev as the winner of the elections to the regional parliament on December 2, 2007. The short list of applicants also included the head of the government of Mordovia, Vladimir Volkov, and the head of the administration of Saransk, Vladimir Sushkov.
“Merkushkin is considered an effective governor, he has a good reputation at the federal level, he controls the political situation,” Oksana Goncharenko, a leading expert at the Center for Political Conjuncture, explained to Vremya Novostey. “There are economic problems in the region, but they are not the administration’s miscalculations - there are consequences of the crisis for industry and the consequences of drought in agriculture.”
In addition, as the analyst notes, Nikolai Merkushkin “is the dominant center for the regional elite”: “The conflict between the elites is hidden; there have been no high-profile conflicts in the region that could cause image damage to the head of the republic.” Finally, Mr. Merkushkin enjoys fairly high support among the population.
The most serious argument against would be Mr. Merkushkin's four terms as president of the republic. “In this regard, uncertainty remained for quite a long time, since the replacement of old-time governors was in full swing, and this especially affected the national republics - Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Bashkiria, Chuvashia,” notes the president of the foundation in an interview with a Vremya Novostey correspondent “Petersburg Politics” Mikhail Vinogradov. However, Mr. Merkushkin had a mitigating circumstance - two terms were incomplete, only two and three years. In addition, he is relatively young - he is 59 years old, while governors whose age is approaching or even exceeding 70 are now considered (and become) candidates for retirement due to age.
In addition, according to Mikhail Vinogradov, there were simply “no people willing” to lead the republic: there is no intersection of interests of large financial and industrial groups. “YUKOS once involved Mordovia in its schemes, in connection with which questions arose for Merkushkin, but since then this has not happened again,” the analyst noted.
When choosing the head of the region, the proximity of the federal campaigns of 2011-2012 should also have been taken into account. And in recent years, in the sphere of ensuring electoral stability, only the republics of the North Caucasus could compete with Mordovia. The Republic belongs to the group of regions in relation to which political scientists use the elegant euphemism “zone of specific electoral culture.” The results of the ruling party here consistently exceed 90-95%. In 2007, local communists even complained that on the night of the counting of votes for the State Duma elections, the result of United Russia jumped to 109%, and only by the morning the republican Central Election Commission lowered the temperature. Officially, these rumors were denied. However, during the 2003 Duma elections, a Vremya Novostey correspondent personally witnessed how the information board at the Central Election Commission, when requesting results for Mordovia, issued the following certificate: “Votes counted - 0%, for United Russia - 100%.” Without a doubt, it would be unnecessary on the eve of the parliamentary elections to change the governor, who ensures such a high-quality expression of will in the territory entrusted to him.