Annual message of Dagestani leader failed to respond to acute problems of republic's life, experts assert

The annual message of the head of Dagestan Ramazan Abdulatipov to the Dagestani National Assembly was controversial and left a lot of questions unanswered. In particular, for the first time Abdulatipov estimated the share of the shadow economy as more than 50%; he harshly criticized the Dagestani hunger-strikers; and said nothing about the problems with tax collection, execution of annual budget and increase of the republic's debt, said the experts, questioned by the "Caucasian Knot".

Ramazan Abdulatipov addressed the republic's parliament (the National Assembly of the Republic of Dagestan) on January 15, at its 32^nd session.

According to Eduard Urazaev, a political observer for the "Chernovik", in Abdulatipov's speech he was alerted with the disparaging remarks about the hunger-strikers. He treated them as puppets in the hands of former bureaucrats, who has stolen money and now want to return to power. Such a tough attitude to criticism, to the public scrutiny over authorities, as we know, leads to abuse of power and authoritarian ruling system," said the expert.

In his opinion, the economic part of the message has a lot of controversial issues. The head of the republic "said a lot about achievements, but at the same time mentioned that 61% of the economy is in the shadow." "And this figure undermines everything, because they spoke earlier about 40-50% of the shadow economy," said the expert.

According to the economist Mair Pashaev, the main point in the message is not what he spoke out, but what he did not.

"He was silent about a complete failure of the economy of Dagestan, a complete failure of the 2014 plan of socio-economic development, a complete failure of execution of the annual budget, an increase in the republic's public debt by 2.5 times in two years, a failure with the plan for taxes and fees for 2014, corruption and embezzlement in the higher echelons of the Dagestani authorities, and sale of posts," said the expert.

The economist has added that the republic's leader kept silent about "persecutions of people for political reasons and for publications in media; about the growing unemployment, reduced incomes and an increase of number of people below the poverty line over the past two years from 17% to 25%."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.