02 March 2004 12:51
Putin tightens grip with new PM-Russian media
President Vladimir Putin's surprise nomination of a low-profile bureaucrat as his new premier is intended to strengthen the Kremlin leader's already nearly absolute power in Russia, newspapers said on Tuesday.
"The president's message is quite clear – he is assuming even more powers and is going to decide things by himself," business daily Vedomosti wrote about the nomination of former tax police chief Mikhail Fradkov, 53.
Putin, who is certain to win a second Kremlin term in a national election on March 14, sacked influential and independent-minded Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov last week. He said his choice of a new premier would demonstrate to voters his plans for the second term and give Russia a team capable of reaching an economic breakthrough.
"The first reaction to his name was shock. Many participants initially thought it was a joke," Izvestia said, referring to Putin's choice.
Fradkov, 53, a foreign trade expert who has served as a government minister twice in a 13-year civil service career, slipped out of the list of 100 most influential Russian politicians two years ago.
"When people heard his name they started asking each other 'Mr Who?'," Izvestia added.
Fradkov, Russia's envoy to the European Union, was due to introduce himself to senior parliamentarians on Tuesday prior to his endorsement by the lower house (State Duma) on Friday. Fradkov told Russian television after arriving back in Moscow from Brussels that it would take him several days to put together a new government team.
Putin's allies, who hold a big majority in the Duma, have already said they will approve the nomination.
Most newspapers felt Fradkov was a bureaucrat with few ideas of his own – an impression bolstered by the man himself who said after his appointment that he would follow the president's lead.
"Fradkov is not a policy-maker, but rather a conduit of someone else's policy. And there is no need to guess who will set down that policy," wrote the official daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Some dailies said Kasyanov's cabinet was the last semi-independent branch of power after Putin ousted influential regional bosses from the upper house and replaced them with loyal figures. The Duma came fully under the control of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party in a December election.
"With the government, Putin applied the same techniques as he did in the Duma and the Senate," Izvestia wrote. "The government will be a technical one. As one high-ranking bureaucrat remarked, 'If you supply the government with a clear task it does not matter who heads it'."
The popular tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets said the appointment of Fradkov pointed up a major change in Russian politics, with the government relegated to a secondary role. "All this means Russia no longer needs a government. The president will guide the cabinet personally," it wrote. "It looks like he is the only member of the team gearing for a breakthrough," the paper said of Putin. "In fact we are witnessing a unique experiment – whether one man with absolute power can manage a huge country like Russia on his own."
[http://gazeta.ru/] |
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