Offer for society improvement

21th century will become the era of the progress in the political system, it will be radically improved.
Political scientist, director of “NeoSintez” research center Pavel Polyan is speaking on the recent innovations within Russian government, in particular pay rise for high-ranking officials.

Reporter I know you sent your project on changing pay system for Russian government officials, to the President Administration.

Pavel Poluyan Yes, I went to the website of Vladimir Putin and sent my project to the President’s e-mail address in 2002.

Currently the low salary level of the officials results in their putting their interests first, over the interests of the state. On the other hand, increasing salaries does not guarantee improving efficiency of the officials’ work and does not prevent them from abusing their power.

I called my project “Deposit Pay” and offered to increase the officials’ salary significantly, but do not pay them in cash. This money should be put on deposit accounts, and officials will be authorized to receive them 3-5 years later under the following conditions:

1. The official was involved in no wrongdoings (including bribery).

2. His/her performance was efficient. This fact must be proved in the official’s annual report and confirmed by his/her supervisor.

”Deposit pay” has the following advantages:

1. Keeping money on the deposit account will make officials pursue much interest in dynamic and stable development of the country.

2. The pay is connected with the official’s performance at work, and the size of the reward is bigger than the possible “shadow income”.

3. The system makes the officials be interested in stable strong national authorities.

If the term of keeping money on deposit accounts is 5 years and the money is accumulated in special federal bank designated to give loans to the real sector of economy, the officials will be very interested in  effective national economics.

Reporter Did the authorities reply to you?

Pavel Poluyan I received the letter from the government in August 2002. They thanked me and wrote that my ideas would be analyzed. However, the recent pay increase demonstrated that some different ideas were used.

Reporter The authorities probably considered your project utopian.

Pavel Poluyan Utopian? Didn’t it occur to you that there was a giant leap in technologies in the 20th century, while political systems underwent no major changes? I assure you – the 21th century will become the era of the progress in the political system, it will be radically improved.

Reporter Everything seemed to be invented and tested: three branches of power, civil liberties, elections, jury trial. Is there anything new you could offer?

Pavel Poluyan There are some interesting ideas, such as the system of over-state authorities. One example of possible innovations. Everybody knows that the law is created by lawyers, passed by the Parliament and signed by the President. The law is the product made by people, and it this means it should have expiration date. The last paragraph of every law should stipulate its expiration date. In several years the law should be expired if the expiration date was not extended. In this way, we plant the grounds for development and progressive changes in the legislation. This should have been done long ago, but so far coups have been the only way of improving our society.

Martemiyan Sizonenko,
Krasnoyarsk, exclusively for PRAVDA.RU