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DANCES WITH
BEARS
When the king dies, the bastards
vie
By John Helmer
MOSCOW -
When Louis XIV was dying in 1715, he had ruled for 72
years, the longest period of absolute one-man rule in
the history of Europe to that time, or in the time that
followed. So long, in fact, that almost all the lawful
heirs to the throne of France were dead - Louis's son,
his grandsons and all but one of his great-grandsons.
That left his two bastard sons, as well as his
bastard daughter, who promptly entered into a conspiracy
to put them in line to succeed in the event that Louis,
the five-year old great-grandson, died prematurely. To
ensure success, they stoked the allegation that Louis
XIV's nephew, Philippe, Duke of Orleans, had poisoned
the others to capture the succession for himself. As
Philippe was lawfully the regent until little Louis
could be proclaimed king, the bastards obliged old Louis
to add a codicil to his will, putting the troops of the
royal palaces and supervision of the boy under the
control of the bastards. The codicil was signed as the
black spots of gangrene were rising up the king's
bedridden legs, just seven days before he died.
Since the governments of states also succumb to
gangrene, and ambitious bastards are everywhere, it's
prudent to ask what the Kremlin wants to do with its
powers over the remainder of the state property it plans
to privatize before presidential elections in March 2004
- the date when, to make the historical comparison, you
might say President Vladimir Putin's regency ends, and
his kingship begins; the date by which, you might add,
the bastards conceived during president Boris Yeltsin's
rule must entrench the codicil that Yeltsin forced Putin
to accept, or risk losing everything.
There are
almost 10,000 state-owned enterprises still in Russia,
and the federal government owns stakes in another 4,354,
according to figures released by the State Property
Ministry. Although, to be legal, privatization must be
submitted and authorized by parliament, the government
may reorganize state enterprises into shareholding
companies - the first and main step towards
privatization - by decree.
Reorganizing the
biggest fuel and energy producers in the economy -
Gazprom and Unified Energy Systems (UES) - has already
begun, and enactment of legislative approval of the UES
plan could be in the bag before 2004. Coal and oil, the
other main sources of energy, are almost entirely
disposed of already. Unless Putin is very careful, or
the Duma is aroused to its first effective revolt since
1998, the regency will end with the transfer of
virtually all the power sources of Russia to the
bastards. The so-called consolidation of regional
telecommunications, and the resale of Svyazinvest,
should give them that power also, at the regent's
expense. Finally, as the revenues of the state treasury
depend on the cash flow from exports, the bastards who
are now consolidating their control over metals,
diamonds and paper and pulp should be in a position to
dictate the state's fiscal policy in no time at all.
"Companies that have strong potential for
competition must be privatized," is the policy of the
government, according to a recent statement by Prime
Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. But is it really? To
understand what that means, all you have to do is gauge
how much power Kasyanov has vested in Ilya Arturovich
Yuzhanov. Ilya who? He is the minister in charge of
anti-trust policy. If Yuzhanov is a figurehead, and his
ministry paraplegic, then the policy of privatization
lacks the only means to achieve its erstwhile goal. The
bastards win all.
A modest example of how the
four largest Russian steelmakers applied to the
government recently to solve their winter supply problem
will illustrate what is happening. To cut the price and
assure ample supplies of steel scrap, which they need
for smelting, the steelmakers recently tried to disrupt
export sales of scrap by seeking a state ban on
shipments out of the Volga River ports. To choke off
lower-priced steel from smaller, competing plants, the
Big Four also asked Kasyanov to impose high emission
fees the smaller plants could not afford; and to tighten
the bankruptcy laws so as to prevent them from trading
while insolvent.
For the time being, the Big
Four steelmakers haven't achieved exactly what they
want, although they briefly convinced international
scrap traders that Rostov port was closed. If the Big
Four had won, it might have been impossible to discover
the game that had been played, let alone reverse the
outcome. That's the problem of power in regencies and
weak states - once legitimacy has been lost, there's no
telling what the bastards will get away with. The rest
is history, an exercise usually written by winners.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All rights
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