Putin Names Prime Minister Candidate – Himself

Posted on October 2nd, 2007 Daniel Adams 1 comment  Print This Post

Putin named himself as a potential Prime Minster candidate.

Putin announced today that he accepted head the United Russia party list in the up coming parliamentary elections in December. Perhaps that is where this whole Kremlin-lead democracy kabuki is leading. I am still waiting for definitive information to be released. The BBC report linked above said that he has accepted the head of the United Russia list (without becoming a member – more on that in a bit), but most of the other reports fail to mention this fact. I’ll check this out and report more tomorrow.

So here are my quick thoughts on this development:

Is Putin’s comment that him serving as Prime Minister “realistic” prospect important?  Of course it is, here’s why. If we take Putin’s comments as true and assume that United Russia wins a majority and he somehow pulls off the feat of becoming Prime Minister (currently the biggest electoral problem for United Russia is to make sure regional bosses don’t report turn out numbers over 100%), it means that Putin will continue to play a significant role in Russian politics.

If this is true, there will be a number of important things to watch. Putin has been very successful in consolidating power in the position of president. If he is going to back anyone for that position, it probably means that Putin is confident that his approved nominee will be compliant to his wishes the next few years or that Putin himself can

Of course many expected that Putin would retain some sort of prominent role in Russia after his second presidential term ended. Some Russia-watchers speculated he would head Gazprom (the largest natural gas company in the world, second in oil / oil equivalent in the world to Saudi Arabia), others thought that Putin would head the international Olympic Committee for Sochi 2014, and a few suggested he would become Prime Minister of Russia. I do not have links right now to those previous guess-timates, but the long-shots betting on a Prime Minister Putin may be right.

So here are the issue I am going to try and sort out:

1) If he is running on the United Russia list in December, can he still serve as President if he is elected Prime Minister?

2) Does Putin not “officially” being a member of United Russia mean anything in terms of being a candidate for the post of Prime Minister? (at least in terms of the paper Russian Constitution?)

3)  Which exact powers does Prime Minister hold now and how quickly do their responsibilities change?