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Putin Offers People with Hope, Then Bread Demanded
Capping his first full year at helm of the geographically largest country in the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin has painted a promising picture for his people with a series of measures to invigorate the economy and stabilize the society.
First of all, the Russian leader spelled out his achievements. On Tuesday, Putin reported a halt of political disintegration and a record post-Soviet growth rate of 7.7 percent last year. He also vowed to push ahead promised structure reforms in his second presidential year.
All these came off when Putin delivered a one-hour state of the nation address to the parliament, in front of which he emphasized that the country has achieved political stability and the government's main task now is to reinforce economic growth to help raise Russians' living standards.
The broad picture of political stability achieved in Putin's first year in office includes centralized political power, cooperation of parliament on virtually all major issues and an almost firm control over the breakaway republic of Chechen through a series of tough military actions.
"The disintegration of the state, mentioned in the last address, has been arrested," the confident-looking president told parliamentarians in the Kremlin's Marble Hall.
In comply with his well-known modest and pragmatic style, the 48-year-old Kremlin chief devoted much of his corporate-style speech to economic, social and legal reforms. He made it clear there was much work to do, because living standards were still low and the unfavorable investment climate has resulted in a capital exodus as much as 20 billion U.S. dollars a year.
In a frank manner, Putin expounded Russia's dependable economy, which is subject to variants of external factors such as world energy and commodity prices. He expressed his worry over the worsening state of several economic indicators in the first quarter this year.
To fight against a possible "stagnation" and boost economy, Putin set out a range of policy initiatives from restructuring natural monopolies to loosening "discriminatory" foreign currency restriction and urged parliament to speed up legislation on administrative, tax, legal, and customs reforms.
He also said the government should be cautious about further borrowing as the country's foreign debt has amounted to 144 billion dollars. In addition, he pledged substantial support to Russia's protracted bid to join the World Trade Organization.
A speculated cabinet reshuffle that has long persisted in the Russian media still remains vague, and what Putin said in his address was to restructure how government works rather than fire ministers. These reforms were earlier planned to be kicked off in May.
Political analysts, however, believed it was possible to be just a tranquil interval in the administration after Putin sweepingly reshuffled his security team last Wednesday, when he appointed close allies Sergei Ivanov and Boris Gryzlov to run the defense and interior ministries.
According to the analysts, Prime Minster Mikhail Kasyanov could be among the next to get a walking paper. But they predicted Putin 's main economic team will remain untouched. Some speculated that Kasyanov might keep his post to oversee the revamp.
Putin himself added such speculation by announcing after the reshuffle that more changes were coming that would be certain to " attract the public's attention."
Markets, parliamentarians and analysts generally liked what they heard from Putin. "It would be great if he managed to do everything he said needed to be done," said Roland Nash, chief economists at Renaissance Capital.
A persistent high popularity of 75 percent indicates people think the president has offered his them much hope; nevertheless, bread is in high demand in turn.
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