Russian democracy in action again

As I told you in one of my previous posts "The Next President of Russia" mayour of Arkhangelsk Aleksander Donskoy declared his intentions to become President of Russia. In a small time after that strange things began to happen.

Our mayor is known for his strong opposition to our Governor Kiselev. Donskoy criticizes him a lot from the point of effectiveness of Governor's work. It should be noticed that from the point of view of common people Kiselev is far far less effective as a manager than Donskoy. For example, our Region is still out of the Federal Program for young families.

About a month ago our Office of Public Prosecutor told press that mayor Donskoy used faked certificate of degree to become a candidate for the mayor's position. Where were the eyes of Public Prosecutor two years ago when Donskoy's certificate of degree was checked very hard? Nobody knows.
It's the end of december now and there's still no proof of fake and even no expertise in action to check whether it is actually faked. I can make only one conclusion - it is not a fake for sure.

The second strange thing happened right after that. Office of Public Prosecutor "misprinted" the press release and instead of faked certificate of degree Donskoy is now charged in "Organizing armed crime gang". Way to go!

Donskoy says that the Governor has given an order to the Office of Public Prosecutor and militia to put Donskoy in jail by the end of this year. I'm not sure that this is true, but it seems like everything is going in that way.

Today mayor's assistant told press that she was oppressed and abused during interrogation. (http://www.arhcity.ru/?news=10323). Interrogator said that he will do everything he is able to do to imprison her. Assistant is now shocked for his behavior.

It seems to me that this is not the end and the scandal is going to grow even bigger. I'm a common man and I am not a professional political analyst, so I can not tell who is wrong or right. Actually when it comes to politics everything is not what it seems. But people around me support mayor because he is the first one who actually does something for the city (or at least makes people think that he does). So if the situation will keep runnung like this the confrontation "Mayor against Governor" would become "People against Governor" what is far worse.

The Next President of Russia?

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Our mayor Aleksander Donskoy has recently told journalists that he should become Vladimir Putin’s successor. Stop laughing! He is serious.

Donskoy is the FIRST one to claim his ambitions. His president’s program is aimed to further harden internal and foreign politics and to strengthen Putin’s “vertical of power” by eliminating the institute of mayor election. Government relationships with oligarchs would be even harder than now; he says that “Business talents of oligarchs are very helpful in Siberia”.

Now let me say something about our mayor’s person. He is 36 years old. Pretty young for Arkhangelsk’s mayor, his precedes were older than 50. He was the owner of the largest food trading network of Arkhangelsk, but now he has sold it for about 7 million dollars. I have to say that he is more active as a mayor than anyone before him. Others were just sitting on their asses letting the city slowly slide into destruction. The city is still almost there, we know that there’s almost nothing can be done about that, but at least we have an impression that there’s a hope 

Of course, no one really believes in President Donskoy, but his intentions have one good result – Arkhangelsk is in top Russian news almost for the first time since the block of flats explosion in 2004, where 89 people were killed.

Brief overview of Arkhangelsk

First of all, I’d like to tell you something about the city I live in. It is called Arkhangelsk and named after Archangel Michael. The city stands on the bank of the river Northern Dvina and it is not very far from the White Sea. The city was founded in the year of 1584 and ever since then it was one of the major Russian sea ports. The city is not very large, it’s population is about 400 000 people.
Below is the photo of Arkhangelsk at winter from the height of a bird flight.