First prime minister and presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev gave a first television address to Russians today. In it, he asked Putin to “agree in principle” to head the government after leaving the presidential post. The proposal has not surprised anyone: United Russia members are happy and opposition members promise the diarchy trouble
First prime minister and presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev gave a first television address to Russians today. The “successor’s” address was shown on federal television channels. In it, he promised to preserve the continuity of the government course and made an offer to Vladimir Putin that he can hardly refuse.
“I think that it is essential for our country to retain a crucial position for the executive branch - the position of chairman of the government of the Russian Federation - for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” said Medvedev.
The first deputy prime minister noted that in order to preserve the continuity of the country’s current course of development, it is not enough to elect a new president who sticks to the path chosen by Russia. “It is equally important to maintain the efficiency of the team formed by the acting president,” Medvedev stressed.
Putin has not yet responded to the proposal. Political scientist Sergey Markov told Expert Online that the head of state is unlikely to refuse. “I am sure that they (Putin and Medvedev) will go to the elections together and together will win in the first round,” said Markov.
Russian politicians are not particularly surprised by Medvedev’s offer. United Russia members, naturally, are very happy with the deputy prime minister’s choice. “We will not only have a young, energetic, new president, but also the best prime minister in the world,” Andrey Vorobyov, head of United Russia’s central executive committee told Expert Online.
“The proposal made today is very logical,” said Vladimir Pligin, the deputy who headed the Constitutional Law and Nation Building Committee in the last Duma. According to the parliamentarian, “it is a continuation of the country’s course of development, Putin's plan, which the vast majority of the population supported in parliamentary elections”.
The leader of A Fair Russia, Sergey Mironov, said that he considers Medvedev’s proposal sensible from the point of view of future work.
Businesses also intend to support continuity. Head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Yevgeniy Primakov said on behalf of businessmen at a meeting with Putin that the continuity of the course needs to be protected.
LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky raised the oft expressed idea of future government reform, when the bulk of the president’s functions will be transferred to the government. He said that the political system in Russia may be transformed into a “half presidential-half parliamentary republic”.
The opposition’s reaction has been negative. “In such a situation, when Putin will be prime minister and Medvedev president, a diarchy is inevitable,” Boris Nemtsov, member of the federal political council of the Union of Right Forces, said to Expert Online. In his view, when a prime minister de facto rules the country, while according to the constitution he is not supposed to, it inevitably leads to trouble.
First deputy chairman of the CPRF Central Committee Ivan Melnikov called Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal part “of a propagandistic strategy of the government”. “All of these political curtseys are done with one aim – cashing in on Vladimir Putin’s stored up popularity to solve specific pragmatic tasks.”
In Moscow’s Patriarchate they believe that Medvedev and Putin as president and prime minister after the election of a new head of state in March 2008 will give the government a broad base of trust. “In the Church they know them as good partners for dialogue and joint work,” said deputy head of the Department of External Church Relations, Moscow Patriarchate, archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin.
Vera Kholmogorova
Photo: Dmitriy Azarov/Kommersant
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