#12 - JRL 2009-214 - JRL Home
Pundit sees 'political gap' between tandem and One Russia
Interfax

St Petersburg, 21 November: At One Russia's congress (in St Petersburg on 21 November), head of the Effective Policy Foundation Gleb Pavlovskiy has perceived a "political gap" between the position of President Dmitriy Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on the one hand, and that of the party, on the other hand.

The political analyst believes this creates a potential for a political conflict which could appear inside the party or inside the country.

"One can see with the naked eye the political gap between the position of President Dmitriy Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on the one hand, and the position of the party as a heavy, absolutely unmodernized body, on the other," Gleb Pavlovskiy told Interfax in an break during the congress.

"I'd like to put forward an optimistic theory - the party has begun to think hard about what it needs to do. The party is definitely not ready, and this is understandable because the thesis about modernization as the main strategy has just been put forward," he said.

In view of this, he said, the congress has laid foundations for a conflict "in a good sense of the word" between the task of modernization firmly set by the president, and quite conservative political forces.

The political analyst believes this is not ideological conservatism but the inertia and passivity of the political masses, including the bureaucratic masses of the political establishment.

At the same time he noted that in this sense One Russia is even less conservative than other parliamentary parties, and the president's words can be applied to all of them.

"Our political class is not ready for modernization, does not want it and look at it as a campaign which will go away. But it will not go away, hence we will be facing a conflict," Pavlovskiy said.

He believes that a conflict is unavoidable, first of all inside the party - between those who are for modernization and "those who are sabotaging it".

"It is possible that a faction of modernization supporters will appear in the party and will start somehow putting pressure on the party's apparatus," he added.

At the same time Pavlovskiy thinks that a political conflict inside the country is also possible. "I think there will be a conflict inside the country as well. We need everyone to declare their positions. Time has come to open one's cards. We are still on the threshold: the president demands movement forward, and the party is thinking a lot."

Pavlovskiy noted that it was obvious at today's congress of One Russia. He said that, in the first part of the congress, there were three completely different speeches by Medvedev, Putin and Boris Gryzlov.

"They don't correlate well. The president delivered a short strengthened manifesto of modernization and tried to inspire the party with his new political strategy, which he defined very clearly as the global strategy of a new political era," Pavlovskiy said.

According to Pavlovskiy, the president's message to One Russia was that the party will be able to operate on the new political scene only if it undergoes modernization.

Pavlovskiy noted that One Russia's chairman Putin had concentrated more on the government's social programmes in his speech.

"To be honest, this was rather a good speech by a prime minister than a party leader. He confirmed his adherence to the president's line and specified how it was being implemented by the government," Pavlovskiy said.

He noted one serious moment in One Russia leader Putin's speech - a proposal that the party should widely revise the bureaucratic system.

As for the speech of chairman of the party's Supreme Council Boris Gryzlov, he did not support either the president's or the prime minister's idea, Pavlovskiy believes.

"As far as I understand, pure water was at the heart of his speech. We must drink a lot of pure water, and everything will be OK," Pavlovskiy said, summing up the thrust of Gryzlov's speech, noting at the same time that the situation with pure water in Russia has always been difficult.

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