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Moscow Times
February 25, 2005
Kasyanov Hints He May Run in 2008
By Valeria Korchagina and Catherine Belton
Staff Writers

Breaking a year of silence, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Thursday slammed Russia's leadership for turning away from democracy and indicated he may run for president in 2008 in order to correct the nation's course.

"Everything is possible," Kasyanov said at a news conference in answer to a direct question on whether he plans to bid for the presidency in 2008.

"The main thing is not who it is going to be, the main thing is that whoever comes to power spearheads a movement toward democratic values," Kasyanov said as he made his first step back onto the political stage since losing his post one year ago to the day.

Kasyanov said he wanted to remain out of the government in the near future. He announced the creation of his own consulting and research firm, MK_Analytica, which he said would focus on attracting investment to Russia.

Kasyanov, 48, lost the prime minister's post on Feb. 24, 2004, when President Vladimir Putin abruptly fired the Cabinet less than three weeks before the March presidential elections. The reshuffle was believed to have been a result of a power game played at the very top between old and new elites, which also led to a further tightening of Putin's control over the government and the parliament.

The stand-off also resulted in the dismembering of Yukos, once the nation's biggest oil producer, and its partial takeover by a state-owned oil firm close to Putin. Kasyanov was one of the last remaining members in Putin's regime of a powerful clique of officials and businessmen close to former President Boris Yeltsin.

But after ridding himself of much of the old elite and gathering power, Putin had a disastrous start to his second term.

First, there was the Beslan hostage crisis and then his embarrassing attempt to keep Ukraine in Russia's fold during presidential elections there that badly backfired. This year he has been hit with the first mass protests to spill onto the streets since he came to power in 2000.

Kasyanov's return to big politics is a sign parts of Russia's political elite may be ready to challenge Putin's previously unshakable power, said Lilia Shevtsova, political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.

"This means one very serious thing: that not just Kasyanov but the Russian political class felt the weakness of the current regime," Shevtsova said. "They felt the weakness of Putin. They felt that the moment had come when they could come back on the political stage."

Kasyanov, who as prime minister had strong liberal credentials, said he was not ready to name a party or movement that he was ready to align himself with. He said the right democratic wing of Russia's political scene was too divided.

He stressed that he did not consider himself to be a member of the opposition. Instead, he said, it is the regime itself that is now the opposition to the previous course, the course people voted for in the 2003 parliamentary elections and again in the 2004 presidential election.

Political opposition leaders such as Irina Khakamada, who ran against Putin in 2004, expressed the hope that Kasyanov could be inspired by the path to power carved by Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko, a former prime minister who won the Ukrainian presidency in December after weeks of mass demonstrations.

"Kasyanov has got status and past experience," Khakamada said. "He is from the elite. ... You can work with this material. But the mass demonstrations are not just anti-Putin they are anti-Yeltsin. They hate Yeltsin and [Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail] Zurabov equally. Putin is still more or less above it all. The protests are not ideological yet."

Yushchenko, she said, "had a clear program, a group of support, and he widened that group by talking to people. He made a lot of compromises."

"Kasyanov has made the first step. ... But apart from criticizing the current regime for its lack of democracy, it is important for him to say what he thinks about the past ... and invite parties to talks," she said.

"For a new Russian president to take power, whether this happens on the streets or not, he has to talk to the people. It's not enough for him to be a leader of the democrats, he needs to be leader of all Russians."

Kasyanov on Thursday refused to talk about the events surrounding his dismissal last year, but openly criticized the leadership for turning away from the liberal course.

He said the current government has turned away from recognized democratic values, strict division of power, independence of the judicial system, freedom of the press and the protection of property rights.

Kasyanov stopped short of naming names. He also acknowledged that his own Cabinet's work had not been perfect.

"I am not saying that everything was good, but right now we are moving in a different direction," Kasyanov said.

"The direction has changed. It is an incorrect one. It harms, it negatively affects the economic and social development of the country," Kasyanov said.

Among his critical remarks addressed to the government, Kasyanov named what he said was the badly explained, planned and implemented social benefits reform.

Another major failure, Kasyanov said, was the loss of control over the inflation.

Some observers wondered if Kasyanov had tipped his card for the presidency too early -- a move that could simply end in legal and political pressure on him. Shevtsova said he was most likely to have weighed the potential dangers.

"He was a bit ambiguous. He still has a chance to step back," she said.

Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst, said there was no chance Kasyanov could stay away from politics for too long.

"Politics is like sex. Those who have never tried it can't understand the attraction. But those who have can't keep themselves away," Markov said.