Putin Desolves Russian Government...

[FallenHero]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/...rliament.ap/index.html

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin dissolved the Russian government Wednesday in a major political shakeup ahead of parliamentary elections in less than three months and a presidential vote next year, news agencies reported.

The dissolution is expected to result in a new prime minister, who will be seen as Putin's choice to succeed him after he steps down next spring.

The newspaper Vedomosti, citing unnamed Kremlin officials, reported Wednesday that Sergei Ivanov, a first deputy prime minister and a leading contender to succeed Putin, could be appointed prime minister in the near future.

Uhhh...perhaps I don't pay enough attention, but I really didn't see this one coming. Can he do that?

 

[waggy]

can he? well he did so what does it matter?


wonder what the fallout of this is?

 

[FallenHero]

Originally posted by: waggy
can he? well he did so what does it matter?


wonder what the fallout of this is?

I dont have the slightest clue as to what Russia will do next. It's been years since I kept up on Russia's policies/political situation. Even then, I didn't know nearly enough to predict the outcome of such an event.

Surely someone in PN will know more about the reaction.

 

[imported_Shivetya]

Expected by many, surprised a few that it happened so early. Does explain the rash of sabre rattling coming from Russia. Putin needs to stay in power, lawfully he cannot. So, the stage is being set to make sure a puppet of his is in power. Look for Putin to remain on is some "Advisory" role or more blatantly a newly created role within government that has subtle but real influence.

 

[LegendKiller]

But I thought Bush looked into Pooty Poo's soul and found a soul mate?

 

[dullard]

I don't follow current Russian politic much. But for a country who's constitution has been completely rewritten every year or so in the last few years, why would anything like this surprise anyone?

 

[jjones]

Looks like Putin is cleaning house. I'm surprised to learn he can do this, but since "government" in Russia consists of the President's political appointees, apparently he can just as easily unappoint them... all.

 

[jonks]

Many heads of state can dissolve portions or the entirety of the federal electorate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_parliament

OP: you gotta close the gaps in that sig...

 

[yllus]

Dissolves. And it's well within his Constitutional powers to do so.

The only real threat that I can see is if he literally stays in office. If he doesn't, as all once-strong leaders do, his crony will sooner or later learn the ropes of his job and go into business for himself, leaving Mr. Putin high and dry. Worry not.

 

[Jaskalas]

Imagine if Bush had dissolved our government and our violent reaction.

Putin should receive such treatment for what he has done to Russia.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas
Imagine if Bush had dissolved our government and our violent reaction.

Putin should receive such treatment for what he has done to Russia.

Why would it be violent? The righties would think it was God-sent.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller

Originally posted by: Jaskalas
Imagine if Bush had dissolved our government and our violent reaction.

Putin should receive such treatment for what he has done to Russia.

Why would it be violent? The righties would think it was God-sent.

Now for what purpose do you say such things? Are you so inclined to favor Putin?s move that you had to try and deflect the topic away from it? Feel free to remove that vitriol.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas

Originally posted by: LegendKiller

Originally posted by: Jaskalas
Imagine if Bush had dissolved our government and our violent reaction.

Putin should receive such treatment for what he has done to Russia.

Why would it be violent? The righties would think it was God-sent.

Now for what purpose do you say such things? Are you so inclined to favor Putin?s move that you had to try and deflect the topic away from it? Feel free to remove that vitriol.

No, I say such things because I seriously doubt people's ability to care about anything more than having shit-stained undies by the fear of terrorists. All Bush would have to do was wave the flag, say he was doing it to protect America from terrorists, say that God set him here to do this, and I think that he'd get a huge following.

He has already shown a complete disrespect for the law, the Constitution, Americans, checks and balances, and intelligence. Why would he be stopped by at least his approval rating backers?

If that weren't true he'd already be removed from office.

 

[sandorski]

Probably just the way it's done there. Elections in 3 months makes it kind of difficult for the Government to do anything until then, so you just "dissolve" it and wait for the Election to be done. 3 months seems kind of long to me though, up here Elections usually last 6ish weeks.

 

[Trianon]

Believe it or not something like this happens in in countries where there is both PM and President. PM resigns with his cabinet, president suggests new PM, paliament approves him, new PM forms new government(Cabinet of Ministers in Russia's case) that doesn't necessarily mean President told him to do so. Just recently Yuschenko in Ukraine disbanded parliament and Cabinet of Ministers together with PM approved by said parliament.

 

[Martin]

It seems a number of you are pretty confused about what happened - Putin didn't get rid of the government, he just dissolved the legislature until elections are held. This is a pretty standard operating procedure pretty much everywhere except the US, though usually its the PM that has this power, as most countries' heads of government (monarchs, presidents) are just figureheads.

 

[StageLeft]

Uh, people, the Canadian prime minister did this a while back. I think it's a natural process in elections; once it's dissolved, elections are held. Let's all caaaaaaaaaalmn down.

 

[jonks]

This reaction to this is similar to a story I saw on Digg yesterday about the RIAA (Recording Industry that sues everyone for p2p downloading). In one of the civil trials they are involved in, the RIAA's lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment. This is a standard brief that is filed in almost every civil case, [BY BOTH SIDES!] that seeks to have certain (or all) claims dismissed before the trial starts. But the story gets posted on Digg with comments like "RIAA tries to weasel out of jury trial" and "RIAA seeks end-run around legal system." Ridiculous, excited comments posted in complete ignorance of standard trial procedure.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Uh, people, the Canadian prime minister did this a while back. I think it's a natural process in elections; once it's dissolved, elections are held. Let's all caaaaaaaaaalmn down.

A point I did not know of. Thanks for the perspective.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Uh, people, the Canadian prime minister did this a while back. I think it's a natural process in elections; once it's dissolved, elections are held. Let's all caaaaaaaaaalmn down.

There are quite a few people looking for him to either appoint a complete lackey to the PM position, or extend the term. Him dissolving the government will allow his people to infiltrate it more. I read a Time article about the guy and his buddies, all former KGB, all tied in, all connected to the business sector.

Russia is slowly degrading back to its historical norm.

 

[Trianon]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
There are quite a few people looking for him to either appoint a complete lackey to the PM position, or extend the term. Him dissolving the government will allow his people to infiltrate it more. I read a Time article about the guy and his buddies, all former KGB, all tied in, all connected to the business sector.

Russia is slowly degrading back to its historical norm.

And this is all you base you judgement on, Time magazine article? have you ever heard about author bias? I don't approve Putin's methods of governing, and recently I was there, and from that experience I believe most Western media stories ATM are overblown propaganda and stereotypes from people contracted to portray the situation in bad light, mostly caused by irritation that Russian leadership stopped being a fingerpuppet for USA and GB.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: Trianon

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
There are quite a few people looking for him to either appoint a complete lackey to the PM position, or extend the term. Him dissolving the government will allow his people to infiltrate it more. I read a Time article about the guy and his buddies, all former KGB, all tied in, all connected to the business sector.

Russia is slowly degrading back to its historical norm.

And this is all you base you judgement on, Time magazine article? have you ever heard about author bias? I don't approve Putin's methods of governing, and recently I was there, and from that experience I believe most Western media stories ATM are overblown propaganda and stereotypes from people contracted to portray the situation in bad light, mostly caused by irritation that Russian leadership stopped being a fingerpuppet for USA and GB.

So you deny that a lot of the businesses that were owned by Jewish businessmen, such as Yukos, were not removed for contrived reasons? That privately owned media companies were not taken over by the state? That people weren't obviously killed by the state? That the KGB has thoroughly infiltrated the government and is not a vassal of the state as it was before, but is now the state?

Please, I didn't take my whole analysis from Time, I have read quite a bit on the subject and it's pretty obvious that this has nothing to do with being fingerpuppets, it has to do with a cabal of guys taking power for themselves and not for the people.

BTW, do you approve of what Chavez has done?

 

[BoberFett]

Dissolve is rather a strange term to use, if in fact it is just the natural process of elections. To us Yanks, dissolve is generally a more permanent situation. Our congress doesn't dissolve, it's simply the end of a session.

 

[Trianon]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
So you deny that a lot of the businesses that were owned by Jewish businessmen, such as Yukos, were not removed for contrived reasons? That privately owned media companies were not taken over by the state? That people weren't obviously killed by the state? That the KGB has thoroughly infiltrated the government and is not a vassal of the state as it was before, but is now the state?

Please, I didn't take my whole analysis from Time, I have read quite a bit on the subject and it's pretty obvious that this has nothing to do with being fingerpuppets, it has to do with a cabal of guys taking power for themselves and not for the people.

BTW, do you approve of what Chavez has done?

I believe that privatization was done using criminal methods and some results should be reviewed and corrected to benefit more people then initial few wheeling and dealing "businessmen". Yukos leadership abused tax laws and used criminal methods to remove rivals.
Privately owned media companies were financed from the same sources as above. Berezovskiy and Gusinskij sponsored Putin all along, until they saw that he doesn't want to be their puppet like Yeltsin was, and they turned into "opposition".
Please present list of people Putin requested killed and irrefutable proof he did so. As far as I know GB still didn't present the facts behind their accusations in Litvinenko story, some KGB people were arrested in Politkovskaya case, but so far I haven't seen any confessions.
KGB was always a very powerful organisation in the USSR, I am sure the connections reach far. Same can be argued about FBI and CIA in the US.
I know many successful people working in Moscow and in Russia in general, and while St. Petersburg clan is definitely prominent, this is not the stage yet to speak of Putin as the next tsar. lets wait for the end of elections. Putin uses people he knew from before, why should he be obligated to bring people from the outside, he was elected, he brought his team. Same happened to Bush admin when they came to power.
I think Chavez behavior is resembling Lukashenko much more than Putin.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Dissolve is rather a strange term to use, if in fact it is just the natural process of elections. To us Yanks, dissolve is generally a more permanent situation. Our congress doesn't dissolve, it's simply the end of a session.

Yeah, it can sound like a coup, but I learned that last time with some elections that it's not as bad as it sounds!