Medvedev fires second governor in two days

AFP/Moscow

Medvedev: cracking down

President Dmitry Medvedev has fired the head of Russia’s southern Karachayevo-Cherkessiya region in the second dismissal of a top regional official in two days.

The sacking comes amid renewed Kremlin efforts to display an active role in improving the country’s social conditions ahead of December parliamentary elections and next year’s presidential polls.

A Kremlin source said the North Caucasus region’s leader Boris Ebzeyev was dismissed for failing to follow the president’s social policy instructions.

"The social and economic conditions in Karachayevo-Cherkessiya and the measures undertaken by the region’s leadership were insufficient,” the unnamed Kremlin source told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

Ebzeyev submitted his own resignation papers – a customary practice in Russian politics.

His post will be filled on a temporary basis by a 35-year-old official named Rashid Temrezov who was previously in charge of road repairs.

The dismissal comes just a day after Medvedev sacked the head of Russia’s volcanic Far East Kamchatka region.

The region was recently rocked by protests that followed Medvedev’s decision to introduce a time zone change that will see the Pacific peninsula spend more of its evenings in the dark.

The Kremlin official said that both dismissals resulted from the governors’ "insufficient results”.

Medvedev has made a shake-up of Russia’s powerful regional chiefs one of the priorities of his presidency.

He has previously forced out out the heads of the energy-rich republics of Tatarstan and Bashkorkostan.