There is a new political conflict in the north of the Nizhny Novgorod region

The confrontation between deputies and heads of municipalities, which has become a trend for a number of districts of the Nizhny Novgorod region, resulted in an interesting personnel decision. Deputies of the Zemstvo Assembly of the Koverninsky District voted to appoint the leader of the LDPR faction in the Nizhny Novgorod Duma, Sergei Brovkin, as head of the district administration. His predecessor Valery Krylov, who headed the district for seven years, resigned of his own free will back in February amid constant conflicts with the zemstvo assembly. But as soon as the deputies approved Sergei Brovkin, the head of the local self-government of the region, the chairman of the zemstvo Vladimir Petushkov, immediately announced his resignation, and with him eight other deputies. This is fraught with a new political crisis in the region: now the zemstvo may be dissolved.

At a meeting of the Zemstvo Assembly of the Koverninsky District last Friday, during an open vote for the post of head of the district administration, deputies agreed on the candidacy of the head of the LDPR faction of the Nizhny Novgorod Duma, Sergei Brovkin. He explained to Kommersant that, as a native of the region, he himself took the initiative, collected a package of documents and submitted them to the competition commission. After a successful competitive selection, ten deputies ultimately voted for it, six voted against it, and three more abstained. Mr. Brovkin managed to bypass representatives of the local political elite - director of Kontur LLC Nikolai Kolosov, chairman of the Gorevsky SPK, deputy chairman of the zemstvo assembly Valentin Rozin and director of Promysel LLC, deputy Evgeniy Sosnin. “The region needs a head with certain connections not only at the regional, but also at the federal level (Sergei Brovkin worked as an assistant to State Duma deputy from the LDPR Alexander Kurdyumov - Kommersant). A person independent of the current situation in the area and without personal connections,” deputy Andrei Chernigin explained the position of the majority.

The previous head of the district, Valery Krylov, left his post back in February 2012. His resignation was preceded by an open conflict with the deputy corps. “Over the seven years of Krylov’s work, the district has become subsidized by 80%,” United Russia member Andrei Chernigin told Kommersant. — The district has stopped making money. The tax base is constantly decreasing." As a result, self-nominated deputy Levon Baghdasaryan continues, in 2012 the Koverninsky district was not included in any of the federal or regional programs. In addition, according to deputy Chernigin, the previous head was literally “mired in scandals” and did not do any real work: “Either he crashed into a bus in his official car on a day off, then instead of allocating an apartment to a psychologist, he gave it to his acquaintance The story with the apartment, by the way, became the reason for a rally near the walls of the administration, at which several dozen residents demanded the resignation of the head of the administration.” Also, according to Andrei Chernigin, henchmen of the head of administration were also involved in the scandals: “A criminal case was opened against the head of the capital construction department, and the person was forced to deal with the courts, and not perform his direct duties. We asked Krylov to replace him, but there was no reaction.” According to Levon Baghdasaryan, deputies attempted to remove Valery Krylov from his position with the wording “improper performance of his duties,” but each time for various reasons this failed: “For example, there were cases when the head of the LSG, the chairman of the zemstvo assembly, Vladimir Petushkov, refused to appoint this issue is up for vote.”

The parliamentary vote for Sergei Brovkin also caused an unequivocal reaction from Vladimir Petushkov: at a meeting of the zemstvo, he announced his resignation. According to the chairman, eight other deputies supported him. Yesterday Mr. Petushkov was unavailable for comment. The remaining deputies, whom Kommersant managed to reach, refused to communicate by phone. Only the deputy chairman of the zemstvo assembly, Valentin Rozin, explained that he did not want to “participate in the booth.” Former head of administration Valery Krylov previously explained the claims of deputies in official interviews with their personal business interests: “Most people adequately understand that the questions voiced at the rally (regarding the distribution of an apartment - Kommersant) are not at all pressing for its organizers, they are not concern for the people and not pain for them. The background here is different. The root cause is the redistribution of the financial market. If a municipal automobile enterprise leaves the base of an open joint-stock company, the shareholders will not receive decent budget money in their personal pockets; the long-awaited modern supermarkets will arrive for decades; the food monopolists will sink into oblivion.”

In addition to the fact that, due to the departure of Vladimir Petushkov, the formal contract with Sergei Brovkin remains unsigned, the demarche of nine deputies threatens the zemstvo assembly with the loss of quorum and dissolution: according to the edition of the charter of the Koverninsky district, published on the official website, the zemstvo can exercise powers provided that in Two-thirds of the deputies work there, which is at least 12 people. But the remaining deputies are not thinking about this yet. “Nobody has seen any resignation notices yet. Therefore, we cannot start the re-election procedure. Perhaps some of them will change their minds and return,” Andrei Chernigin suggested. Sergei Brovkin is also confident that the zemstvo will continue to work. According to his information, this year the district charter was adjusted and, according to these changes, half of the deputy composition plus one vote is enough to make decisions. True, he does not rule out that opposition-minded deputies will make other attempts to dissolve the zemstvo, and such work is already underway at the level of village councils, which supposedly can also initiate this procedure.

Experts believe that the current situation in the Koverninsky district and the appointment of Mr. Brovkin are a coincidence of circumstances and a consequence of squabbles among local elites, and not evidence of a change in political course. “The LDPR and United Russia are fellow travelers. To understand this, just look at how the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, votes in the State Duma,” says political scientist Valentina Buzmakova. “Watching Brovkin, we can conclude that he is ready for dialogue. Koverninsky deputies voted for Brovkin’s candidacy, not so much focusing on his party affiliation, but on his personal characteristics,” explains Evgeniy Semenov, head of the Center for Socio-Political Research of the Volga branch of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to Mrs. Buzmakova’s forecast, in a difficult political context it will not be easy for Sergei Brovkin to govern the district: “Being the head of the faction, he learned to speak well and convincingly. But it’s one thing to speak in the city duma on behalf of the party and quite another to manage the economy in such a difficult area.”

Anton Prusakov

Podkoverninskaya struggle