Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [129]
8. The presence of international observers is essential throughout the transitional period while passions are cooling. A request from the Federal Center to the international community for observers should be seen not as a sign of weakness but of strength.
9. Political leadership during the transitional period should be in the hands of a Russian Governor (the terminology favored by the majority) with the rank of Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President for Settling the Chechen Conflict. This could be a Deputy Prime Minister with special powers. The continued presidency of Alu Alkhanov is likely for a time, but retaining Ramzan Kadyrov in any capacity is out of the question. He is reviled.
10. The main criterion for the Russian representative is that they should be a civilian. He or she should be well known and respected by Chechen society, and should have a record as a consistent opponent of the war in Chechnya who has not wavered in response to the “Party line.”
11. It is essential that there should be a Chechen Office of the Russian Representative in Grozny, with Russian and Chechen representatives of civil society well acquainted with the situation and with people’s needs throughout the years of the war. These should be individuals who have worked in the thick of the war as human rights observers, and accordingly have earned popular respect. No bureaucrats.
12. The economic institutions for governing the Republic should be subordinate to the Office of the Russian Representative. Revenues should be under the control of civil society and members of the Federal Council who have an unblemished reputation.
13. A public discussion on the future of Chechnya should be organised gradually. Should it be a parliamentary or a presidential republic? This cannot be decided by Moscow. Decisions from Moscow will not be accepted, and national harmony will be undermined.
14. Organization of a public discussion on the type of constitution people should live by. It is essential to do away openly, through discussion, with the present constitutional “dual power,” where one section of the population does not accept the 1992 Constitution, while another section does not accept the 2003 Constitution. Such a discussion can bring about a normalisation, and genuinely fair and free elections in accordance with a single constitution in which everybody will feel able to participate.
15. Finally, after a few years of this process of peace and demilitarisation, free elections should be held in accordance with the pattern of a presidential or parliamentary republic adopted by a majority of the population.
Other people may have other plans and different arguments to mine. This is all to the good. We had a Constitutional Convention in Russia: let there be a Chechen convention to discuss and debate the options. There is no time left. We need high-powered brainstorming and soon, without personal ambition, without bragging about who was invited first and who second, and without the usual swinish misconduct from our political elite.
We need to think now in order to survive, for all our sakes. In memory of the children of Beslan.
The cowards can help only by quitting. They have already done quite enough.
GROWING DOUBTS
December 1, 2005
It is finished. The conclusions of one of the parliamentary commissions into the Beslan slaughter have been published at a session of the North Ossetian Parliament. The inertia has been overcome, which can only be to the good.
Some of the report’s conclusions, however, create a strange impression. For example, Mr Kesayev, the Head of the Commission, assures us that the first telephone contact with the separatists occurred 28 hours after the start of the terrorist act, that is, towards noon on September 2. That is incorrect. Contact had been established two hours after the start of