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Medvedev warns Russia opposition not to rock boat
“The strengthening of democracy does not mean the weakening of law and order,” Medvedev said in his address to Russia’s political elite gathered in the Grand Kremlin Palace.
“Any attempts to rock the situation with democratic slogans, to destabilize the state and split society will be stopped.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Medvedev’s mentor and the country’s most powerful politician, watched from the front row flanked by his key lieutenants as the president spoke. The audience gave Putin a standing ovation when he entered.
Medvedev named worsening violence in Russia’s volatile, Muslim-dominated North Caucasus as the country’s biggest domestic political problem and called for an effort to “fight international terrorism and destroy bandits” there.
Killings in the North Caucasus have spiraled this year as a low-level Islamist insurgency feeding on poverty combines with feuds among corrupt local officials and businesses.
The president spent most of the 100-minute speech talking about the need for Russia to move its economy away from its Soviet roots in heavy industry and energy extraction towards 21st century sectors such as medicine, telecoms and space. Foreign policy was hardly mentioned.
“We haven’t managed to get rid of the primitive structure of our economy,” Medvedev said. “...The competitiveness of our production is shamefully low.”
Amid a blizzard of targets, Medvedev called for Russia to boost the share of locally produced medicines to half the market by 2020, cut gas flaring dramatically by 2012 and launch broadband internet and digital TV nationwide in five years. “The nation’s prestige and prosperity cannot be upheld forever by the achievements of the past,” Medvedev said, referring to Russia’s Soviet legacy of nuclear weapons, infrastructure and oil and gas production.
“The time has come for us, the present generation of Russians, to make its voice heard: to raise Russia to a higher level of civilization.”
Despite his emphasis on modern technology, Medvedev did not neglect the country’s powerful defense industry, saying that more than 30 ballistic missiles should be deployed in 2010 and three nuclear submarines commissioned.
Wishful thinking
The address contained no details on how Medvedev’s ideas for economic modernization would be implemented, which worried some financial market participants.
“It was disappointing from an investment point of view that it was very light on any specific point of action, just a reiteration of what we have already been hearing,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Russian brokerage Uralsib.
The president had tough words for the country’s giant state corporations, saying they had “no prospects.” Independent auditors should examine them and they should then either be closed down or turned into companies with shareholders. Political analysts said that Medvedev, who reaches the mid-way point of his four-year term next May, had failed in the speech to explain how his ideas would be followed up.
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