The veteran politician who heads Russia's Daghestan region is facing criticism after suggesting that some school employees in the North Caucasus republic look like "cows."
After a hail of criticism targeting Ramazan Abdulatipov on social media, a lawmaker in Daghestan took the regional leader to task with a one-man protest on the central square in the capital, Makhachkala, on May 3.
Along with a poster denouncing bribery, Communist lawmaker Marat Aslanov held a sign featuring verses from beloved Daghestani poet Rasul Gamzatov, who died in 2003.
Next to a verse that hails "the women of mountains," the words "fat cows" were written in red and crossed out. https://dag.life/2017/05/03/deputat-parlamenta-dagestana-ot-kprf-vyshel-na-odinochnyj-piket-v-mahachkale/
Aslanov said that he was protesting against recent statements by Abdulatipov.
At a meeting with education officials on April 26, Abdulatipov urged school principals to hire "pretty girls" as deputies and complained that "now you come to a school and see only cows there."
He spoke after praising the work of an ethnic Russian woman who had been a deputy education minister in the region and became deputy prime minister, prompting some to accuse him of insulting women from non-Russian ethnic groups in Daghestan.
At the same session, Abdulatipov, 70, said that he had to bribe a Russian agency that controls educational institutions when he was a university rector.