The long-delayed presidential address is to be delivered to the country on Friday. It is unlikely, however, that the president will have much of note to say. The fact of the matter is that he simply does not have much to point to as an accomplishment.

President Vladimir Putin, regarded in the beginning as Russia's savior by supporters and a budding Andropov by detractors, has proven to be neither of these things. For all the talk about "dictatorship of law," Russia has seen precious little of either dictatorship or law.

Far from establishing an iron autocracy, as so many liberals hysterically warned of early on, the Kremlin has proved unable or unwilling to make serious reforms, intimidated as it is by the country's moneyed interests and the intractability of the bureaucracy. Moreover, in the climate of lawlessness and might makes right that still pervades the country, the letter of the law is close to meaningless.

In transforming the Duma into a body that largely simply rubber-stamps Kremlin decrees, the government has been able to pass a wide range of reformist bills into law. Some of these reforms are actually quite worthwhile - on paper. And, in the absence of an independent judicial system and legal framework, paper is the only place they will be. You can pass all the laws you want, but if they are not enforced, or enforced capriciously and arbitrarily, it is the same as having no laws at all.

Despite all the laws, it is clear that little has changed in the Russian state or society, or in business. Indeed, ironically, what improvements have been seen have largely come from the side of society and the business community acting alone, not at the behest of a government decree - Yukos' unprecedented level of transparency, adopted so as to increase its share value, is a good example of this.

The fact of the matter is that the legal system remains in hoc to various interests. Laws are not enforced in order to implement justice - rather, they are applied in order to serve the interests of someone or other on high.

The wild lawlessness in Chechnya and the untouchability of most of the perpetrators is merely an aggravated case of the general situation in Russia.

There, a blind eye is turned to brutal "cleansing" operations and soldiers sell bullets to the people they are supposed to be fighting, while elsewhere in Russia the police operate as commercial, often illicit, enterprises .

The bureaucrats, after all, are too busy extracting bribes and hassling people to be worried about criminals - especially those in their own ranks.

The bureaucracy, law-enforcement agencies and the government at every level serve to promote their own interests, not those of the country they are supposed to be presiding over and looking after. Taking care of oneself and ignoring the broader consequences has become a way of life.

This is the central flaw of modern Russia, which lies at the core of all its other problems - irresponsibility and looking out for No. One at all costs has thoroughly permeated the system. Once Putin begins to really examine this issue, then he will have a presidential address he can truly be proud of.

When Putin gets up to speak to the country, he would do well to tell the country that, for the next year of his term, he will do less talking and more listening. That would be a presidential address we would like to hear, and one Russia really, truly needs to have.