Putin fires entire cabinet before election (Agencies) Updated: 2004-02-25 08:26
Less than three weeks before the presidential election, Russian President
Vladimir Putin fired his prime minister Tuesday in a surprise stroke that rids
the Russian leadership of a top holdover from the Boris Yeltsin era.
Russian President Putin
signs a directive to sack Prime Minister Kasyannov and the entire
cabinet.[Reuters]
The dismissal of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his Cabinet also
apparently bolstered the authority of Putin's inner circle of former KGB agents
and set the stage for a makeover of the country's top leadership.
Kasyanov was a strong advocate of the business tycoons many Russians regarded
with disdain. His ouster is likely to widen Putin's already overwhelming lead
before the March 14 presidential election by attracting voters who accused Putin
of continuing Yeltsin-era policies that the tycoons used to amass great wealth.
Under the Russian government system, the prime minister is primarily
responsible for steering economic policy. The dismissal of the prime minister
also means the dismissal of the rest of the government, though any of them could
be reappointed.
Putin, right, greets Deputy Prime Minister
Viktor Khristenko who was named on Tuesday acting prime minister, at the
Presidential Security Council in the Kremlin in Moscow, Tuesday, Feb. 24,
2004.[AP]
In a statement broadcast on state
television, Putin said he was reshuffling the Cabinet ahead of the vote to
"avoid uncertainty in the federal executive structures." He said the Cabinet's
performance was "satisfactory" but he wants a new government to push reforms
further.
"The president wanted to show that he was rupturing ties with the old
regime," said Igor Bunin, the head of the Center for Political Technologies, an
independent think-tank.
Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment said that firing Kasyanov could
allow Putin to "lay blame on the government for everything he hasn't achieved
during his term."
Putin named Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko, widely perceived as
essentially a yes-man for the president, as interim premier. Putin now has two
weeks to submit his nomination for a new prime minister to the legislature.
Until a new Cabinet is formed, the ministers dismissed Tuesday will be
considered "acting" ministers, and Khristenko is expected to meet with them on
Thursday, Russian news agencies reported.
"Within a week of being appointed, the chairman of the government will have
to present me with proposals for a new structure of the federal bodies of
executive authority," Putin said.
It was unclear if that statement meant Putin was planning a major overhaul of
the way the government is shaped. The timeframe also raised the possibility that
Putin would not have a government in place before the election.
The White House, aware of the importance of the U.S.-Russian relationship but
increasingly concerned about political developments under Putin, weighed
carefully how to respond. Several hours after Putin's announcement, White House
press secretary Scott McClellan was still telling reporters he needed more time
to look into the matter.
The Bush administration is worried about independent media in Russia and
believes parliament - dominated by Putin supporters - isn't the strong
legislative arm it could be.
Kasyanov was named finance minister in 1999 and became prime minister after
Putin, then prime minister, was elected president in March 2000. He had clashed
with Putin's proteges who were crowding the Cabinet and the presidential
administration.
Speculation about his ouster intensified in recent months after he criticized
a probe of Russia's Yukos oil giant even after Putin bluntly warned the Cabinet
against meddling in the issue. The attack on Yukos is broadly perceived as the
Kremlin-instigated effort to curb the political ambitions of the company's
billionaire ex-chief, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Kasyanov had said that the Yukos probe hurt Russia's investment climate and
set back economic development.
"With Kasyanov's dismissal, big business lost their last major lobbying
channel in government," said Roland Nash, the chief strategist for the
Renaissance Capital investment bank.
Last fall, Putin sacked his longtime chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, who
had championed the tycoons' interests.
Kasyanov was dogged by media allegations of corruption early in his career,
earning him the nickname "Misha 2 percent." He shook off that negative image by
championing liberal reforms and presiding over an economic boom in recent years.
Kasyanov's time as prime minister actually marked a period of relative
stability. Yeltsin famously fired four prime ministers in 19 months, finally
settling on Putin just months before abruptly resigning from the presidency
himself on Dec. 31, 1999.
"Kasyanov represented a sense of stability with a good track record on
reform," Nash said. "More reforms were implemented in the past four years than
entire past decade."
The ouster of the Cabinet pushed shares down briefly on the Russian stock
market, but the benchmark RTSI index ended the day down only about 1.5 percent.
"There is no sense that policy will change," said James Fenkner of the Troika
Dialog investment company. "The market is waiting for a new reform push."
Few pundits believed that Khristenko will hold the job. Most said that Alexei
Kudrin, who served as first deputy to Kasyanov and shares Putin's St. Petersburg
roots, appears to be the top candidate.
Some mentioned Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who like Putin is a veteran of
the KGB.
Kasyanov served in the Soviet-era state planning agency Gosplan during the
1980s and steadily rose through economic and financial posts after the Soviet
collapse.
As deputy finance minister in 1996, he worked out a deal for repaying debts
Russia inherited from the Soviet Union. Two years later, he played a key role in
efforts to restore Russia's credibility after the government defaulted on
foreign debt and the ruble plunged.
