Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised that "there will be no problems" defining relations between himself and his successor.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Russians Expect a Lot from PM Putin
The majority of Russians think that Vladimir Putin will receive a measure of presidential authority as prime minister, according to a poll by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion. Eighty-eight percent of Russians expect Putin to retain his political influence after his presidential term ends; 29 percent of those who voted for Medvedev expect Putin to retain the main control even after his term ends. Only 30 percent of Russians think that Putin should leave politics and allow Medvedev “full independence.”
Director of the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (Russian abbreviation VTsIOM) Valery Fedorov told Kommersant that the Russian public “simply cannot imagine that such a powerful, authoritative politician could voluntarily limit his authority or follow a policy of subordination.” Nor do they want him to. The expert community is less certain of the future structure of Russian leadership. They point out that the deputy prime ministers bear more responsibility than the prime minister himself, and that Medvedev will have his own “kitchen cabinet” of advisors chosen by him alone. They also predict a reorganization of the enforcement agencies in the Russian government under Medvedev, which will include the departure of the current deputy chief of the presidential executive staff Igor Sechin.
The Constitution of the Russian Federation “sets up checks and balances so that we have a unitary political regime headed by the president,” observes head of the constitutional law department of the Higher School of Economics Mikhail Krasnov. Therefore, he added, “if the president wants to be independent, he will be.” However, Krasnov continued, if there really is “a gentlemen's agreement that the prime minister will be strong and independent, that means that the center of real decision making will move from the Kremlin to the government.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 07, 2008
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