Thanks to HSE (Higher School of Economics) for organizing the event. And Kuzminov personally deserves credit: instead of keeping quiet and pretending not to notice anything, he proposed an open discussion. It was interesting. Although discussing the concept of a draft law for four hours must have been torture for some in the audience. I’m honestly surprised there were people hardy enough to listen and watch all the way to the end. By the end of the fourth hour, I was convinced that the online stream had... well, not very many viewers left. As for the substance: there was, of course, a lot of confusion and overlap (which is normal for this kind of format). Everything got mixed together. The debate was not easy—these were serious opponents, and you can’t win them over with bare slogans. But it was extremely useful to talk with the most informed, committed, and articulate opponents of Federal Law No. 94. It was a serious stress test for the arguments. I can’t say they convinced me—if anything, I left the room even more convinced that I was right. All the arguments, from “we need to build a system” to “young scientists can’t buy reagents” and “bad construction firms will win all the tenders,” deserve serious attention and discussion. But most of them are simply outdated misconceptions by now (the builders, the reagents), and no one is arguing against the need to “build a system.” What I don’t understand is why that system should be built on the principle of a “presumption that the customer is acting in good faith.” I still didn’t get an answer to the question: why not test this proposed miracle system right now at Gazprom or Transneft? I spent the last two days buried in folders of procurement statistics (I’m literally dreaming about those charts now), getting ready to argue with the Economic Development Ministry’s numbers. It didn’t come in especially handy this time, but it will still be useful in the future. Once again, thanks to Yaroslav Kuzminov, Yevgeny Yasin, all the HSE staff and students who came to the debate, everyone who argued the other side, and of course everyone who supported me. If you’re not afraid of four-hour videos, here you go (full version):
Shorter clips, like these:
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Update: Vedomosti on the debate. Note that they cite the same figures I mentioned: the changing number of Economic Development Ministry tenders won by HSE.
Navalny: when Nabiullina talks about corruption, it makes me laugh A heated debate is flaring up around the new system for regulating public procurement, drawing in not only ministries and government agencies, but also the public and experts. Read the full article
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