Deputies of Chechnya proposed to consider Kadyrov the “father of the people”

The deputies of the Chechen parliament proposed to supplement the title of the position of the head of the region, Ramzan Kadyrov, with the title “Father of the people.” The relevant bill is posted on the official website of the legislature. According to the document, it is planned to amend Art. 63 of the constitution of Chechnya, which specifies the powers of the head of the region.

“The first paragraph after the words “Head of the Chechen Republic” shall be supplemented with the words “Mekhkan Yes”,” the statement reads. project. This phrase can be translated from Chechen as “father of the region” or “father of the people.”

It is also proposed to supplement the article with the following paragraph, in which the head of Chechnya is declared the guarantor of the constitution of the republic, “human rights and freedoms”, and also takes measures “to ensure the rule of law, security and territorial integrity” of the region. Previously, this was not mentioned in the basic law of the republic.

The authors of the bill were 20 deputies of parliament, including its speaker Magomed Daudov.

The parliament of the republic, given that 2023 was announced by Kadyrov as the Year of the Chechen language, proposed to supplement the title of his position with a “semantic, but not literal” translation into the Chechen language, which sounds like “Mekhkan Da,” the Minister of Information and Press of the region Ahmed explained on February 2 Dudaev.

“In the Chechen language, “head of the family” is translated as “kh1usamda”, and “head of the village” as “yurtda”. And not a single speaker of the Chechen language perceives these turns of speech literally as “father of the family” or “father of the village”, otherwise it would turn out that there are almost 400 “fathers of villages and settlements” in our region. Therefore, the semantic translation of the post “Head of the Republic” in Chechen sounds like “Mekhkan Da”,” – wrote he is in his Telegram channel.

The “essence and meaning” of the bill is to, in accordance with Article 10 of the Constitution of the Chechen Republic (which establishes Chechen and Russian as state languages), strengthen measures aimed at “preserving and developing the culture and identity of the Chechen people,” Dudayev said.

In Russia, heads of regions can only be called heads, but in addition to this, a different name can be used at the subject level. Kadyrov, who has headed Chechnya since 2007, was the first of the heads of the regions to say that he does not want to use such a name. In Russia, the “parade of regional presidents” should be stopped, he said in 2010, setting the trend.

The last “president” among the leaders of the regions is the head of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov. The bill to rename his office was passed on first reading on 26 January. After its final approval, Minnikhanov will have to be named “head – rais of Tatarstan” (rais is the title of the president in Arabic and in some other oriental languages).

Rostislav Turovsky, vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies, believes that the introduction of amendments to the Chechen constitution is a way of demonstrating loyalty to Kadyrov on the part of the parliament and its head. The parliament’s proposal looks like an element of absentee competition with Tatarstan and emphasizing the special status of Chechnya, which, among other things, managed to maintain direct elections for the head of the republic, which were canceled in the rest of the North Caucasus, political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov notes.