Putin moves to stay on beyond term limit
One of Russia's most influential politicians has unexpectedly called for the country's constitution to be amended to allow Vladimir Putin to stay on as President for a third consecutive term beyond next year.
The plea, by Sergei Mironov, the Federation Council Speaker, raises the spectre of Mr Putin remaining in the Kremlin for a further seven years.
Anointed by Boris Yeltsin in 1999 and then formally voted into office in March of the following year, Mr Putin is coming to the end of his second four-year term, a prospect that has many wondering anxiously what will come next.
As he prepares to step down, his personal ratings stand at close to 80 per cent while Russia itself is in the feel-good throes of an oil-driven consumer boom. However, under the current constitution nobody is allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms and Mr Putin is therefore not eligible to contest a presidential election pencilled in for 2 March of next year, a contest he would undoubtedly win by a landslide.
Two candidates to succeed him, both cabinet ministers, have already emerged and are jockeying for position in what looks like a carefully orchestrated, media-driven election struggle. Both men, Sergei Ivanov and Dmitri Medvedev, are Putin protégés.
Yet when asked, many Russians say they would like Mr Putin himself to stay on, something he has repeatedly ruled out. Mr Mironov clearly hopes he can persuade him to change his mind. A Putin loyalist, he called for the ban on anyone serving more than two consecutive terms to be abolished and said that presidential terms should be extended from four to up to seven years.
Such changes could be voted through in just two months, he added. "I've spoken about the need to continue President Putin's course after 2008," said Mr Mironov. "The best candidate to continue this course is Mr Putin himself."
"What the President has done is great. Today's Russia is completely different to what it was in 1999. But everything is just beginning and we have only been living in a stable society for two years. As a Russian citizen I want this to continue."
Mr Mironov's voice carries considerable weight; he is one of Russia's political heavyweights, runs the parliament's upper house, and recently founded a new Kremlin-backed party called A Just Russia.
His statement was unexpected because many other politicians of far lesser stature have made similar calls in the past only to be rebuffed by a flattered but resolute Mr Putin, and until yesterday it was thought that the Kremlin had abandoned the idea of changing the constitution.
Significantly, Mr Mironov's suggestion was supported by Lyubov Sliska, the influential Deputy Speaker of the lower house of parliament and a senior figure in Mr Putin's United Russia party. But in a sign that Mr Putin's supporters are split on the issue, Boris Gryzlov, the Speaker of the lower house, said he was strongly opposed to changing the constitution.
The Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, suggested that Mr Mironov's suggestion was a dangerous Kremlin-inspired trial balloon designed to test public opinion.
"Today the head of our government has more power than the pharaohs, tsars and general secretaries (of the Soviet-era Communist Party) put together. We shouldn't be talking about extending his term of office but about his responsibilities before the citizens of his own country."
The Kremlin said Mr Putin remained opposed to any changes to the constitution, though some analysts believe he is secretly leaving the door open for such an eventuality.
Original article posted here.
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