Post date: Feb 06, 2012 5:58:34 PM
MOSCOW, RUSSIA (FEBRUARY 6, 2012) (REUTERS) - Russia must give its people more political power but should not hastily follow foreign recipes for democracy, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in an article published on Monday (February 6), one month before a presidential election he is expected to win.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin publishes a newspaper article and meets with political scientists as the presidential campaign gets underway, saying there will be no political amnesty because Russia does not have political prisoners.
Facing the biggest opposition protests of his 12-year rule as he prepares to return to the Kremlin, Putin acknowledged in a front-page article in the daily Kommersant that many Russians want a stronger voice.But he announced no new electoral reform initiatives, signalling he intends to move cautiously in a six-year term and keep a firm grip on the political system he has dominated since he was first elected president in 2000.
He made no mention of a street protest movement that erupted in December and showed its staying power on Saturday (February 4), when tens of thousands of people marched in central Moscow behind a banner reading "Russia Without Putin!"
The protests were fuelled by suspicions of fraud on behalf of Putin's ruling party in a Dec. 4 parliamentary election.
They have also been an outlet for anger over the plan Putin revealed last September to switch jobs this year with President Dmitry Medvedev, which deepened resentment among Russians who believe formal elections give them little real say in politics.
Monday's article was yet another one in a series of similar publications by Vladimir Putin who would not take part in presidential debates ahead of the election.
His opponents, most notably Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky who was not permitted to run for president, have said it was more appropriate for a leader who had run the country for 12 years to show specific results of his reign rather than to write articles outlining what needs to be done.
During a meeting with Russia's leading political scientists on Monday, Putin addressed criticism of his article.
"I frequently hear during discussions of my articles - I'm very glad by the way that my articles are being discussed both by those who support what is written there and by those who criticise - so I frequently hear the same argument from the critics: why didn't you act before (on what you've written)? Because it was either impossible to do anything, because there were no resources and no conditions, or those problems were not urgent at all," Putin said.
In both his article and during the meeting Putin neither proposed any new democratic initiatives nor acknowledged the protests.
He also said there was no need for political amnesty in Russia as the country doesn't have a single political prisoner.
"I don't quite understand though what people mean when talking about political amnesty. It seems to me that we don't have any political prisoners, thank God. But people still constantly talk about that and give names. Maybe they could show me at least a single one who's jailed on political motives. I don't know, some are jailed for 15 days, but they were set free long ago. Who else? I simply don't know," Putin said and laughed.
Many in Russia and in the West believe former Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were imprisoned on political motives. They were found guilty of tax evasion and have been in jail since 2003. Putin has repeatedly said they have committed a crime.
Opposition activists are routinely put in jail for a 15 day period for staging unsanctioned protests. One of the opposition's most prominent leaders, Alexei Navalny, was put in prison for 15 days after staging a rally on December 5, the day after Russia's parliamentary elections.
Opinion polls indicate Putin is all but certain to win the presidency despite the protests and a decline in popularity from previous highs. His United Russia party still holds the simple majority needed to pass most laws in parliament.
Saturday's opposition protest faced a rival pro-Putin demonstration that also drew tens of thousands of people.
The pro-Putin rally was dogged by accusations that state employees were ordered or paid to go, but Putin held up the crowd size - which he said the Moscow mayor had told him was 190,000 - as evidence that he has majority support.
His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the turnout suggested Putin was likely to win the election outright on March 4, avoiding a runoff by receiving more than 50 percent of the votes cast.
Also running for president are rich businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov, and perennial candidates Communist Gennady Zyuganov and nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.