The re-appointment of Shaimiyev has a great importance for the federal reform, which Putin launched last year. Despite the fact that, so far, only two dozen of 88 regional leaders have been appointed according to the new procedure, it indicates that the reform has been de-facto conducted. The new appointment procedure, when the legislative assemblies elect regional leaders endorsed by the Russian president, has been tested and showed its viability.
Besides, the legitimacy of this procedure has been confirmed and is definitely worthy of respect. Shaimiyev, undoubtedly, is the most authoritative regional politician in Russia, and Tatarstan is one of the strongest Russian regions, economically and, most important, politically. The Kazan Kremlin has never attempted to win the Moscow Kremlin's favors. The relations between Kazan and Moscow have been always based on the assumption that Tatarstan is a state within the Russian State, rather than a region or territory. Moscow authorities carefully respect the declaration on the state sovereignty of Tatarstan adopted back in 1990, under the Soviet regime, and also the treaty on the delimitation of the terms of reference with the federal center signed in January 1994.
"Our President inherited a tough situation in the country," Shaimiyev said after Vladimir Putin had been elected for the first term as Russian President. "Incapable authorities, the absence of information about the situation in the regions and in society in general," commented the Tartar President on the plight of the Russian President.
Shaimiyev was in a much better position at the time, primarily, because he had started to build his own version of the "power vertical" as far back as in the beginning of the 1990s. The progress Putin had to make ten years later with an enormous amount of effort, Shaimiyev seemed to have achieved with no effort at all.
For instance, the solution of problems in relations with the lower-level authorities. For Putin, those are governors, mayors and presidents of the constituent members of the Russian Federation. For Shaimiyev - heads of city and town administrations. In Russia, both categories are elected figures with a restricted number of rights and responsibilities. They receive their mandates from the electorate rather than from superiors, and are accountable before the same electorate. In the conditions of weak democracy in Russia, such accountability often took the form of corruption, irresponsibility and embezzlement of budget funds. The situation with local self-government was even worse than with governors because local self-government was not part of the federal government system and, therefore, had the legitimate right to ignore orders from above.
In the 1990s, Russia experienced a number of conflicts between the authorities of the federation members and local self-government bodies. In some places, the city of Vladivostok for example, authentic "city wars" were waged involving garbage collectors and housing and communal services officials. The Constitutional Court was inundated with complains, and more often than not it called the actions of the representatives of the state as unconstitutional. All the above-mentioned facts do not refer to Tatarstan, though. Its state system is designed so well that such conflicts could never take place there, in principle.
As far back as in the middle of the 1990s, Tartar legal experts thoroughly analyzed the Russian legislation and found the formula that allowed them to fit the city and town administrations into the republican "vertical," and at the same time make the local authority accountable not only to the population (the practice that is still problematic and almost non-existent in Russia), but also to higher echelons of power in the republic. Such formula turned out to be so effective and viable that today the Russian authorities attempt, with a disappointing delay though, to introduce it into the structure of relations between the Federation and its constituent members. It is worth mentioning that if the authorities on the major part of the Russian territory realized the effectiveness of such a system only after the Beslan tragedy, the Tatar leadership was aware of its advantages long time ago.
No wonder the republic never experienced conflicts that would even remotely resemble those in Chechnya, or Ossetia and Ingushetia. Tatarstan is the largest Muslim republic in the Russian Federation. It can be easily called an Islamic state. The population of the republic consists of 4 million Muslims and two million non-Muslims, Tartars, Russians, Bashkir, and dozens of other ethnic groups. While other Russian regions with the population as diverse as in Tatarstan were going through endless ethnic and religious conflicts, tried to introduce the Sharia law and fight the infidels, like in Chechnya, Tatarstan was building relations between the center and local authorities on the basis of the Russian legislation and was steadily developing its economy, without waiting for specific orders from the Russian President. The republic attracts a large volume of capital investments. Last year they reached $3 billion. If all the entities of the Russian Federation resembled Tatarstan, the current administrative reform aimed at the strengthening of the power vertical would not have been necessary. It would have been established long ago, benefiting the citizens and the state. Although, the long road is still ahead. Tartar leadership regards the reform that involves a new procedure for appointing the heads of the federation members as a temporary measure, which had to be introduced during a difficult transitional period that would ultimately lead to the return of the direct vote system. Although the Tartar President and the majority of members of the Tartar State Council supported the idea of the reform, they believe it is necessary to stress its temporary character.
The obvious advantages of this reform for a part of Tatar political elite and the population is in the fact that it allows to avoid expenditures related to elections and instability that accompanies election campaigns. Although even considering this factor, Tatarstan, strictly speaking, does not need a new appointment procedure for the president of the republic. The incumbent president, who never planned to occupy the office for the fourth term, did not need it either. However, other Russian regions need it desperately because, contrary to Tatarstan, they suffer from inefficiency of their current administrative system. President Putin, who has been trying to change this system for six years, desperately needs its successful implementation, as well.
In this case, Tatarstan and Shaimiyev became allies of Russia and Putin, after the latter shared their authority with them for the sake of the common good.
