Why we need President

We are called to presidential elections, but some voters doubt if we need the elections at all.
The President will be unable to consider every small point in Russia. Whose interests will the President represent? What if not mine? In addition, the leading candidate is going to construct “power vertical”. What if he will restrict my civil liberties? We are advised that there is no sense of life with no freedom. I will not allow! I do not want “an official to make decisions instead of me”, “a tycoon to become richer”, “a dependant to grab and share money”. So, why do we need to elect President?

One should take into account that modern society is not a pool of free, but primitive unicellular organisms enjoying and reproducing themselves. The society is a complex organism of multi-level hierarchic structure which needs all its components with their interests and obligations for proper work. For example, without adrenalin of entrepreneurship this organism will be weakly mass of meat, without bone and muscle skeleton of proletariat it will be a dystrophyic freak living in the world of shares and interest rates.

Unfortunately, for the last 15 years of unlimited freedom no political leader seemed to understand this. Each of them represents a certain group of society (distinguished by nationality, age or common  interests) and tries to put this group’s interests on a big scale saying that his companions are the only “saviors of humankind”, and all other groups are “enemies of humankind”. NOBODY is willing to negotiate (remember the last parliamentary elections).

While politicians are confronting each other, life goes on. Smart representatives of EVERY social group have managed to direct money flows to serve their momentary needs, and they do not care the consequences it causes to other people. Certainly smart individuals operate on wide range: some are “minimizing” tax payments, others sell rotten goods. Meanwhile, capital funds are becoming old, the bowels of the Earth are running low, qualified specialists in industry retire. For example, currently Russian railways administration is unable to find contractors in Russia for producing railway vehicles. The fact that Russian railways have increased cargo traffic and earned sufficient funds for producing railway vehicles, is not of help.

This brings us to the conclusion: we have left behind the idealistic period of persuasion and explanations, there is a pressing need to stop by force left radicals yielding about oligarchs, right radicals shouting about officials and their arrogant grumbling about “dependence” of common people. On the other hand, we have to eradicate the metastases of laziness, cheating and cupidity in all the systems of the society.

Somebody must do this. However, this person is required to have excuses for his/her actions.

There were many attempts to find rational excuse for the need of introducing new organizational measures, but they all proved to be fruitless. Hardly a professor in economics proves that business is unable to operate within the existing taxation system, as Auditing Chamber head Sergey Stepashin publishes the report of a company evading taxation at the sum of billions of dollars. As soon as a sociological institution director expresses on TV his indignation about scanty salary of university professor on the level of living wage, another sociology scholar in the same TV program  calls to “bring down the myth of the poverty of education and health care” citing shadow turnover of billons of roubles in these spheres.

Interestingly, all the discussion participants rely on facts. But none of them mentions the simple conclusion: the gap is not BETWEEN different professions or age groups, the gap is INSIDE each of these groups. This gap is growing deeper every day. Indeed, law-abiding director of a research-and-production company suffocating from tax load, and Russian businessmen – regular customer of a casino in Las-Vegas, are absolutely different people despite belonging to the same business community. There is similar huge mental difference between surgeon operating day and night and well-groomed medical boss spending every weekend in the apartments somewhere on the Red Sea coast, although they both belong to “corrupted” health care.

MORALITY is the key to solve the problem. Morality created a gap between colleagues, neighbors and relatives. Socially responsible person should be guided only by morality in every his/her deed, not by mythical “human rights” and “laws”. In real DEED, not in discussions about this or that. The norms of morality should be understood in broad sense: not only restraining from drinking alcohol, cursing or debauchery , but as the code of conduct for socially responsible person in his/her entire life – signing the contract, doing construction work, examining the results of these two previous deeds.
Rights and laws are written by people, and they tend to contain mistakes. Laws are composed eloquently, but often with bad intentions (remember the former State Duma economic law-makers Head who is currently on the international wanted list). Everybody understands morality in a similar way. Even those violating it realize they are doing dirty tricks. By making loud statements like “Morality is not an economic term!” they just try to fool the public and soothe their own conscience. One has to be strong enough not only to understand, but also to act according to the conscience.

It is hard. One has to produce strict demands for him/herself. It would be naпve to think that everybody will do this, but the most responsible and energetic ones will. There are quite a bit of such people in Russia. They are in different cities, it is difficult for them to see each other and feel mutual support.

For this purpose we need the President. He will just implement the hopes of such people. We need a person to say in public what moral and energetic people expect and to implement his statement into reality, at least occasionally, but firmly and publicly. In this case, in every town and village there will be people to mobilize all their forces and accept the responsibility of the problems of the state.

Our recent history proved that this is the fastest and most effective way to achieve significant result. Only that leader called “energetic” people of other sort. He gave the example of hard drinking, unlimited cynicism and cupidity.

The dilemma we are facing is simple: we will survive if we find healthy forces in our society, if not – Russia will collapse.

Tertium non datur.

Alexander Artemov