A SHIP loaded with oil and diesel caught fire after an explosion today as it was docked in the Russian Baltic city of Kaliningrad, Russian media reported.
Two people were hospitalised with medium to serious burns, ITAR-TASS news agency quoted the emergency situations ministry as saying.
State television showed footage of firefighters hosing water at a ship with a red hull as thick black smoke poured from the vessel. RIA-Novosti news agency reported that 14 fire engines were in action.
The ship was carrying 200 tonnes of oil and 200 tonnes of diesel, ITAR-TASS reported.
"An explosion took place on the tanker at Kaliningrad's Yantar shipyard," Interfax news agency quoted the local chief of the emergency situations ministry, Alexander Kulchitsky, as saying.
The explosion could be heard throughout Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave bordering the Baltic and surrounded on two sides by Lithuania and Poland.
The Kremlin has found a way to include mayors in the vertical of power without formally violating the constitutional requirement of the independence of local self-governance from organs of state authority. Today the State Duma council will examine amendments to the federal laws On the General Principles of Organization of the Legislative and Executive Organs of State Authority in the Russian Federation and On the General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Governance in the Russian Federation. The amendments, written by United Russia Party members Vladimir Mokry, Vladimir Zhidkikh and Alexey Ogonkov, will allow governors to deprive inconvenient mayors of the majority of their authority and practically take the management of regional capitals on themselves. The document will be distributed to the subjects of the federation for examination this week.
The draft amendments allow regions temporarily to exercise individual authorities of organs of local self-governance of settlements and city districts that are the administrative centers of subjects of the Russian Federation for the purpose to guaranteeing unity in life support, communications and other infrastructure systems. Mayors can be deprived of up to ten authorities, including organization of heating, gas, electric and water services, management of domestic waste, building and maintaining roads and bridges, transportation services, establishing rights to land use and control over land use. The meaning of temporary is to be determined legislatively by the regions.
Mokry, head of the Duma Committee on Issue of Local Self-Governance, explained that We're not saying that it's mandatory. But, in the case of deterioration of the quality of the services provided to the population, organs of state authorities should have the same responsibility as local self-governance. It is a question of competence and the correct spending of funds. Local self-governance should confirm its work though efficiency. Kommersant has obtained information indicating that a number of Kremlin officials stand behind the initiative, including presidential chief of staff and former governor of Tyumen Region Sergey Sobyanin. The Kremlin also freely admits that the amendments will make it possible to control uncooperative mayors of wealthy donor cities who come into conflict with regional governors.
Governors have been attempting to gain control over the mayors of their capital cities since the institution of popular mayoral elections. That effort has gain momentum n regions where governors have been appointed by the president and not elected themselves. Incorporating municipalities in the vertical of power would require constitutional changes, however, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has said is impermissible. The appointment of mayors is also a violation of the European Convention on Local Self-Governance, which would cause Russian problems with the Council of Europe. A temporary transfer of power is not a de facto violation of the Constitution, even though the term of that transfer is left to the discretion of the head of the federation subject. The law already allows such transfer in cases of natural disaster, or when a municipality has overdue debts that exceed 30 percent of its income or state subventions are misspent. Representatives of the opposition characterized the law as a way for governors to punish politically disloyal mayors.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/05/2006 01:12 ||
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The amendments,.... will allow governors to deprive inconvenient mayors of the majority of their authority and practically take the management of regional capitals on themselves.
"But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
"The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station."
Posted by: Steve ||
04/05/2006 15:57 Comments ||
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The State Duma Council on Thursday will discuss United Russia-drafted legislation that would allow governors to confiscate powers from mayors who manage their cities poorly.
The amendments promise to provoke consternation among liberal politicians and Western leaders, both of whom have expressed concern that the Kremlin is rolling back democracy by eliminating gubernatorial elections and scrapping individual races for the State Duma, among other things.
The latest measure, political analysts said, is a sign that the Kremlin wants to make sure that leaders from the municipal level on up will guarantee a good showing for United Russia in the Duma elections next year and a smooth handover of power to the person whom President Vladimir Putin picks as his successor in 2008.
Under the amendments, mayors would lose most of their powers during a natural disaster, if their city's debt exceeds 30 percent of its income or if the city mismanages government subsidies, Vladimir Mokry, a co-author of the amendments, said by telephone Tuesday.
The governor would gain the right to oversee key sectors of the city, including heating, gas, electricity, water and public transport, as well as the right to manage the building of highways and bridges and to determine the rules for using public land and building on it, said Mokry, who chairs the Duma's Local Administration Committee.
"Regional powers should not only have the responsibility but also the right to intervene to solve the problems that trouble a city," Mokry said.
He noted, as an example, that electricity had been cut to cities and towns that have overdue bills. "In this situation you have mayors saying that they don't have money and governors saying they don't have the power to intervene. We need to find a solution to this problem," he said. Mayors would still be elected by popular vote.
Mokry insisted that the amendments were not a "political order" to guarantee the Kremlin's control of the country.
"We are not building the power vertical or fulfilling someone's political will, we just want to force everyone to work in the interests of the people. We don't want to destroy democracy or the self-rule system in the country," he said.
The amendments are officially an initiative of United Russia, but the party usually only acts under the Kremlin's orders.
Duma deputies are currently discussing how long a governor should be allowed to keep a mayor's powers and the details about the circumstances under which the powers can be taken away, Mokry said.
The amendments were submitted to the Duma on Friday and will be discussed by the agenda-setting Duma Council on Thursday. Regional legislatures will then have 30 days to examine the legislation and add further amendments.
The Duma is expected to consider the legislation in a first reading in mid-May.
Even though the amendments would not give governors the right to hire and fire mayors, political analysts said that they would pave the way for the de facto control of every leader in the country.
"The Kremlin wants a situation even more maneuverable and predictable for the elections in 2007 and 2008. They want to be sure that they don't have any scandals before and during the elections," said Sergei Mikheyev, a senior analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.
Under the Constitution, mayors can be dismissed by courts. But with the new amendments, analysts said, the Kremlin would be able to control the mayors through the governors, without any change to the Constitution.
Governors are now effectively appointed by the president, a change Putin ushered in as a way to strengthen the state after the 2004 Beslan school attack.
Russia faced international criticism for that change, and the Kremlin appears keen to avoid a similar confrontation ahead of the 2007 and 2008 votes.
Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with Indem, a think tank, called the latest amendments a step back to the Soviet Union, when everybody was somebody else's subordinate.
"Everyone has to have a boss breathing down his neck, starting from the governors, who are under the Kremlin control, to the mayors, who will be subordinated to the governors, and ending with the street cleaners," Korgunyuk said.
"The Kremlin is so paranoid about losing its power that wants to have control of every single person, just in case," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/05/2006 00:49 ||
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A militant group comprising four members has been captured in a sweep operation in Chechnya.
"A total of four people, including the group's leader - Khamzat Tushayev, emir of the village of Duba-Yurt - have been arrested," the republic's Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov told Interfax on Tuesday.
The operation was carried out by Chechen policemen and servicemen of the Russian Interior Ministry's provisional task force, he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/05/2006 00:47 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A SHIP loaded with oil and diesel caught fire after an explosion today as it was docked in the Russian Baltic city of Kaliningrad, Russian media reported.
