Kremlin: Governors must make peace with local elites

This new model has already been used against the Governor of Kaliningrad Oblast Georgy Boos, who recently was fired amid growing public discontent in his region, newspaper RBK Daily reports.

A source close to the president’s administration says that other governors can expect the same if they can’t come to terms with mayors and other local elites. Similar situations as the one in Kaliningrad are evolving in Volgograd, Murmansk, Yekaterinburg and Altay, the newspaper writes.

Several Governors belonging to the ruling party “United Russia” have been involved in campaigns for removal of unwanted mayors. In Murmansk the independent and publicly elected mayor Sergey Subbotin was forced to leave his post after a long-lasting conflict with the United Russia dominated city council, in which the governor took the council’s side.

Governors were given the right to dismiss mayors by a decree from the Russian Government in June 2009.

Gubernatorial elections were scrapped by President Medvedev’s predecessor Vladimir Putin in 2004 in favor of a system in which the president appoints candidates and regional legislatures confirm them. Under Medvedev, new rules were introduced that allow the party that controls the regional legislature to submit three candidates to the president, who can then select one or go with someone else altogether.

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