* Defence minister ousted after corruption scandal
* Serdyukov broke codes of honour and patronage
* Kremlin rivalries and web of patronage persist
…
“The number of violations, and we are talking about violations everywhere, was so great that his presence was no longer acceptable,” former Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on the sidelines of a conference, making clear the corruption investigation was not the only cause of Serdyukov’s downfall.
His main mistake, in Putin’s and Zubkov’s eyes, probably lay elsewhere.
“Serdyukov’s real mistake was that he broke the golden rule of loyalty to the family, his political family,” said a source close to the government.
WEB OF INTRIGUE
Russian defence chief crossed Putin’s political ‘family’ | Reuters
Tag Archives: Patronage
Russian defence chief crossed Putin’s political ‘family’ | Reuters
Posted by Matt
on November 9, 2012
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Murphy’s Law: China’s Dirty Big Secret
Posted by Matt
on April 28, 2012
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China’s leaders are not happy with the state of their armed forces. The critics include many irate generals and admirals. These complaints tend to be made in private meetings. But so many people attend these meetings that details do eventually get out to the general public. Since these leaks do not represent official policy, they do not get repeated in the Chinese media, and foreign media tend to ignore it as well. It’s more profitable for the foreign media to portray the Chinese military as scary. The truth, as Chinese leaders describe it, is more depressing. It’s all about corruption among the military leadership and low standards for training and discipline. In short, Chinese military power is more fraud than fact.
It’s not for want of trying to improve. For the last two decades China has been undergoing yet another military buildup and upgrade. There have been several of these over the last fifty years. All have failed. Why should the current one be any different? The earlier efforts failed because of growing corruption and loss of military spirit. Most people can understand the role of corruption. Military spirit is another matter, but as successful generals and military historians have noted for centuries, the warlike attitudes of an army makes more difference than the quality of their weapons.
Rotting From Within
Judging from a recent series of scathing speeches by one of the PLA’s top generals, details of which were obtained by Foreign Policy, it can’t: The institution is riddled with corruption and professional decay, compromised by ties of patronage, and asphyxiated by the ever-greater effort required to impose political control. The speeches, one in late December and the other in mid-February, were given by Gen. Liu Yuan, the son of a former president of China and one of the PLA’s rising stars; the speeches and Liu’s actions suggest that the PLA might be the site of the next major struggle for control of the Communist Party, of the type that recently brought down former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai. Liu is the political commissar and the most powerful official of the PLA’s General Logistics Department, which handles enormous contracts in land, housing, food, finance, and services for China’s 2.3 million-strong military.
Zakaria: How oil is propping up Putin – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs
Posted by Matt
on February 15, 2012
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Neither view is entirely accurate. The real hero of Russia’s rescue was oil. The dramatic rise in the average Russian’s income has been a consequence not of Putin’s policies but of oil prices. The price of oil when Putin came to office was $27 a barrel. From that point, it began an almost unbroken rise and is now at $116 a barrel. And oil is the lifeblood of Russia’s economy. It provides two-thirds of its exports, half of the federal government’s revenues.
The Russian state has used these revenues to dole out patronage across the country. It is widely believed in the West that Putin stays in power through repression. Actually, he does so in larger measure through bribery.
In the short run, Putin will be able to win the March election and consolidate power through a mixture of repression and patronage. His problems are more long-term. His government has ramped up its revenues to the point that it now needs oil to approach $125 a barrel simply to balance the budget.
Russia’s demographics are terrible. …
Zakaria: How oil is propping up Putin – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs
Love Don’t Cost a Thing: Can Educating Girls Alone Curb China’s Mistress Epidemic? – TIME
Posted by Matt
on May 29, 2011
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Throughout China’s dynastic history, keeping mistresses was not only tolerated, but actually had the official seal of approval from the men at the top. The country’s emperors maintained legendary harems of concubines, as did noblemen, wealthy merchants and anyone seeking to enhance their social status. Indeed, the country’s most famous classic novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, relates the story of an imperial concubine in the Qing dynasty who supports her entire family, including its own numerous concubines, thanks to the emperor’s patronage.
Love Don’t Cost a Thing: Can Educating Girls Alone Curb China’s Mistress Epidemic? – TIME
How the oil curse went global | Foreign Policy
Posted by Matt
on October 19, 2009
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The resource curse has gone global.
For years, oil wealth was mostly a danger to those, paradoxically, who possessed it. Resource-rich Middle Eastern countries, and their labor-exporting neighbors, failed for decades to invest adequately in their people or to diversify their economies. A massive influx of oil receipts and worker remittances discouraged investment in sectors conducive to steady long-term growth, fostered corruption and patronage, inflated regional real estate and stock markets, and provided irresistible incentives for governments to spend with wasteful, shortsighted abandon.
But today, the Middle East’s resource curse is spilling over into the international financial system.
How the resource curse went global – By Mahmoud A. El-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe | Foreign Policy
The end of the South African dream
Posted by Matt
on April 14, 2009
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South Africa is following the path of Zimbabwe. The future does not look bright.
My current supervisor in the actuarial department of an insurance company in the pacific northwest is from South Africa.
Why did he leave?
Crime.
The crime is getting so out of hand that it is intolerable to many people.
From the article:
It emerged from apartheid a bright young democracy, but Mandela’s South Africa is today a fading miracle. As voters go to the polls on April 22, the country’s most trying days may yet be ahead.
During the last 15 years, South Africa’s politics have increasingly fallen into an elite system more intent on patronage than provision of services. As convicted criminals and fraudsters populate party lists with little public outcry, leading figures of integrity have all but given up, eschewing public service and leaving the door open to those who view politics as an opportunity for personal enrichment. Mandela’s vision — to build a democracy based on “one people with a common destiny in [its] rich variety of culture, race, and tradition” — appears to have been lost on successive generations of South African politicians across the ideological spectrum.
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