In the wake of a series of bloody terrorist raids this year, Russia has been pressed to reform its political and electoral mechanisms to fight terror and safeguard national security.  

However, a package of reformative measures put forward by President Vladimir Putin after the Beslan school hostage carnage has encountered incessant criticism of backward democracy from the West.

Russia, while defending its course of reform and denouncing the "double standards in the fight against terrorism," has forged ahead with its bid to seek international support for its anti-terrorist campaign.     

Putin's controversial political reforms

In the first nine months of the year, Russia was hit by the gravest terrorist attacks over a decade.

The February blast in a Moscow subway train, the bomb explosion that killed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov in early May, the armed raids on government buildings in the Ingushetia Republic a month later, the suicide bombing outside a Moscow metro station and the twin crashes of airliners in late August, and especially the Beslan hostage-taking crisis in early September that claimed the lives of over 330, most of them children, stunned the world.

After Beslan, Putin set in motion political and electoral reforms that, according to the Kremlin Press Service, uncovered the vulnerability of Russia's political structures and impelled the country to take actions to eliminate security threats.     

l         Reform of regional electoral system

On December 12, Putin signed a law ending election of regional leaders of the country's 89 constituent regions by popular vote, a move he said would strengthen national unity in the face of terrorism.

Under the new regional election law, if a candidate nominated by the president is rejected twice by local the legislature, the state leader will have one month to negotiate on a new candidate with a conciliatory commission representing the local parliament.

And the president has the right to disband any regional parliament if it rejects his candidate for the third time.

Critics in and outside Russia, particularly the United States and the European Union, said the law was a dangerous attack on democracy and a deprivation of people's rights.

Retorting the criticisms, Putin asserted that the new measure would not change the balance of power between federal and regional authorities. Instead, it would streamline public administration and consolidate national unity in the face of terrorism without curtailing democracy.  

l         Reform of parliament electoral system

After the Beslan school hostage tragedy, Putin proposed another major reform -- a modification of the way deputies to the State Duma are elected, according to which lawmakers will be elected solely through voting on party lists.

Opponents said the draft bill, which is expected to be soon taken up by the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, where pro-Putin parties enjoy a majority, would strengthen his already firm grip over the country's political course.

Putin, however, insisted that a proportional electoral system is necessary to reinforce the role of big and skilled political parties that represent the interests of the citizens and unite them.

In a subsequent step along the same line, the parliament passed at the yearend a bill raising the threshold for political parties to get registered from 10,000 members to 50,000 and setting a minimum membership of 250 in regional branches compared to 100 at present. The bill would make it harder for new and small political parties to get registered.     

Intensified anti-terrorist campaign and appeals for int'l co-op

Riled by unceasing brutal terrorist attacks this year, most of which Russia blamed on Chechen terrorists that receive foreign funds, Putin and a number of top military officials have warned that the country is earnestly preparing for preemptive strikes against terrorist networks around the world, saying such actions could involve any weapons except nuclear ones.

The country's 2005 budget, which was passed by the State Duma in early December, allocates 531.06 billion rubles (about US$19.2 billion) for national defense and 398.17 billion rubles (US$14.37 billion) in national security and law enforcement spending.

Reiterating that there is no one to talk with and no basis for compromise in the decade-old war against Chechen separatists, Putin tries to take indirect control over the restive North Caucasus republic by building up a Chechen government led by pro-Kremlin locals through elections amid continued crackdown on separatists.

The Russian leadership also appealed for greater international cooperation in cutting off the flows of terrorist financing and criticized "double standards" in the counter-terrorist campaign.

Striving to defend national security and eliminate foreign terrorist threats, Russia has never ease its efforts to seek anti-terrorist support from its major partners across the world.

In addition to reinforcing its relationship with the United States and the European Union in fighting terror, Russia has also boosted its ties with Asia-Pacific countries, with more emphasis on partnerships with China, India and Japan.

It also managed to get collective backing from the Commonwealth Independent States (CIS), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The CIS groups all former Soviet republics except the three Baltic states.

The State Duma on December 15 ratified a treaty that envisages cooperation in fighting terrorism among ex-Soviet republics.

The 1999 agreement, signed by Russia and the other 11 members of the CIS, calls for joint anti-terror efforts and envisages the possibility of dispatching anti-terror units from participating nations to help deal with a terror attack against one of the pact's signatories.

Given the deep-rooted separatist forces within its territory and the complicated international terrorism situation, Russia's anti-terror war is set to be a long one.  

(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2004)