Communist Leader: Putin Presidency "won't Change Anything"
MOSCOW. Sept 24 (Interfax) - Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said Saturday's announcement that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will run for president in 2012 had "nothing new for us."
"The tandem is forced to maneuver because any attempt to ruin it would lead to a collapse of the entire policy of recent years," Zyuganov told reporters.
"Nothing serious has been done on the country for the past four years, the government has remained incompetent, unprofessional, it can't work normally, so the reshuffle in the tandem won't change anything," he said.
The Communist leader said Russia is in for a second wave of crisis and that the United Russia party will be unable to win too many votes at December's parliamentary elections.
"As for Putin, United Russia can't prevent the defeat that is programmed, and so they will ask (Vladimir) Churov to get the Central Election Commission to work for (United Russia's) votes, though this would be quite difficult to do," Zyuganov said.
Churov is chairman of the commission.
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