right and if you move a song from feinstein. who's for instance on t.v. don't come. to star team also and this is our top story tonight the ruling tandem is set for rotation russia's prime minister vladimir putin the run for the presidency next year is kind of the sea was put forward by the reach of the bed of the return agreed to lead the losing party and the country's government it's our main story there's more that coming up next and the latest edition of people of elle's debate show cross talk on the air now.

welcome to cross talk of people about russia's great political parlor game has come to an end president dmitri medvedev announced he would support but i mean putin's candidates the succeed him in next year's presidential poll was this the plan all along was it a good idea and was what is called the pandemic can it continue to work. to cross-talk russia's political future i'm joined by fred we're here in the studio with me he is the moscow correspondent for the christian science monitor adrian

pap's in cambridge he's a lecturer in politics at the university of kent and in london we cross a jot and steal he is the international affairs commentator for the guardian all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want but first marcia want to walk us through about what happened at united russia's convention that's very clear the guessing game is officially over prime minister vladimir putin is set to run for president in two thousand and twelve election his candidacy endorsed of the united russia party convention by incumbent president. so children played leisure in here given the proposal to have the electoral lists of the party united russia and to do some party work on condition of good performance in the parliamentary elections and i readiness for practical work and government i believe it would be right for the congress to support the candidacy of lantier and to not in the presidential election the announcement and speculation about the trajectory of russia's election cycle and reassure is russia's partners around the world concerned with political risk to the pleasure i'd like to express my

gratitude to you for supporting my candidacy to run for president it's a great honor that the only choose who has already served two terms as president. before imitative took over the job in two thousand and eight addressing saturday's convention puts it in terms of just going to take over the role as the next prime minister if the party performs well in parliamentary elections in december if you're going to. elections coming in i'd like to ask russian citizens to support a united russia party with the. recent constitutional amendments have extended the presidential term from four to six years which means that if prime minister putin is elected president in two thousand and twelve he could be in office until twenty twenty four back to you peter thank you very much for that marcia first i'd like to go to jonathan any surprises for you there to mr big believe his indorsed prime minister putin to succeed him you know there's no surprise at all it was always

assumed this would happen but i think it is actually confirmed that this was the plan already from a long time back i think the main disappointment will be very careful because he had shown in the last few months that he was actually rather enjoying being president and still hope that there might be some change of plan sergeant he could carry on as president well that's obviously not going to happen well. adrian about that well it will he'll become prime minister so continuity continuity in a lot more continuity than well but sounds like a nice idea but politics doesn't quite work like this this is about legitimacy and credibility and i don't mean by just changing positions they're ruling tandem can preserve support is already crumbling and they need to do more than just swap jobs well i mean support is a support for whom for united russia or for. well for united said russia as a party but also for modernization there is

a clear desire for that but implementation has been extremely slow and only very partial so the question is will president who's in the future president putin gave the government any real power to implement policies that stamp out corruption and it's not looking like about ok fred. you are we talked earlier you're not surprised at all that you think this is more about the parliamentary election this is the timing of it all because we all knew it was as i started out the program this is a parlor game everybody's been talking about it for months but it you know the the united russia party is low in the polls or not as high as it used to be and they need a superstar to come out in and really inflate their numbers because going into the election in december they don't have the same kind of straight that they used to i i frankly don't know why they decided to do this now the script of the putin you're usually had them announcing the president after the elections after they've got some signals because the system as it's constructed right now doesn't give a lot of signals from below i mean reliable signals that people higher up can

understand. so i guess it's clear it is clear to everybody that united russia is in trouble politically it's it's you don't have to go very far to hear people speaking in awfully cynical tones about the party and frankly this the system that it dominates represents there is a clear palpable disaffection creeping in it's not rebellious. it's not really loud people are ready to go into the streets but the tone is really different than it was in the last election cycle and probably this has been picked up they feel like they need to do some more intense age craft maybe for the duma elections but but frankly. i think the main way. it's not the

united russia when the duma lections i think the number to watch is voter turnout yes they said in the past that probably the biggest fear would be mr apathy there jonathan if i can go back to you i mean i can see some of the questions that. i could see coming from all of you on the panel here but the fact of the matter is mr putin is genuinely very popular in russia and going through some little of opinion polls which are considered the most reliable here he comes out consistently is the most popular by a long shot politician in this country well that's true and that's always been the case but i think the numbers have gone down a bit yes they have i think to come back to the one of the points that fred made about why there are doing it now i think in a way question is sidestepping are getting amid very different dorst as the head of the ticket so that if in the december elections the united russia party does much less well than before major forget the grain growers and so he's trying to lift himself above the battle i think and if i can may even be keeping in reserve the

option if united russia does badly but everybody says it will still win and not even have a very different prime minister in future saying well he didn't do well enough in the election we'll have to find somebody else that's very interesting adrian if you go if you want to jump in avery but i think that's exactly right it is a master stroke by putin once again he's getting out of parliamentary politics just when it's getting difficult not just in terms of you know it's in russia but also in terms of the economy and society. if there's apathy and if there's real votes you know this contend with the government and we're ready to presidential candidate as well it's very interesting to me you know we again going back to a conversation we had earlier i mean coming back to the presidency right now when we look at international events going on i mean there's a political salami financial tsunami canonic tsunami going on around the world and here mr putin is going to come back into the fray i mean is it something that he thinks he feels is necessary to do because that he has a trusted circle around him that he's built up over the years i mean it you know

coming back into. having the country in these times is that it's maybe a noble idea but it could be difficult as well i think that pretty clearly displayed the united russia congress was. very much a prisoner of the system he built he did build it there are a lot of accomplishments to that system it restored stability in this country after a really disastrous decade. he brought in a semblance of law and order. and you know whether it was high oil prices or not he also found ways of redistributing income. creating infrastructure projects so a lot can be said for that decade and the stabilization that that brought in but he also you know it is the nature of this kind of power system that you surround yourself with groups and supporters and and people who who do execute orders

also have their piece of the pie and they depend on you it's personal relationships the kind of it's often called planned relations but they are of vital importance in the sense that it's all right but i mean if we even heard today if because if i go to jonathan here. mr putin was made it very clear that he wanted a mr big bit of come back as prime minister with a new team now maybe kind of reading the tea. he leaves there mr medvedev whole modernization program will probably continue only as prime minister so some of the objectives that we saw that mr i'm a bit of it a lot of people in the west had hoped for maybe maybe too much or because they prefer the softer touch of mr mcbride of over mr putin but there is an obvious indication that the country has to continue modernizing it cannot continue with the same kind of political system and economic approach that it has had for the last decade. modernizing what have been modernizing the political system no there's been

a reversion of the with the party to governors the raising of the threshold where they're not in the sense it's not it's not i want to make it clear as i said that's a that's a myth if it actually they are confirmed through local committees in each region but i allot of people would say that that was necessary to keep the country together that's part kartik part of the process of keeping the states sovereign what do you think about that adrian i mean there where is the next step here i mean or these are just treading water because well mr medvedev was talking about liberalizing the the political system or having more representative having parties more representative by blowing the election threshold you think that's going to continue. well i think we have to wait and see but i am rather skeptical the trouble is that putin's policies for ten years or so have been entirely statist he doesn't trust independent businesses and he doesn't trust civil society i think present it it was trying to strengthen private business the rule of

law and civil society but of course he had not enough room of maneuver he didn't have enough power to implement this and so i think we're heading back to statism the troublous state capitalism doesn't work much president free market capitalism well free market capitalism isn't doing very well in the west and i suppose it's good if you continue debate on how much role the state does play in here and there but there is there is there needs to be more competition here in this one of the reasons why they're having this privatization drive i don't know if it's going to be postponed now because of the turbulence outside but still breaking up some of the monopolies or this is still our schedule i suppose so but i think that modernization of the political system as jonathan said is a crucial thing you know democracy isn't just a pretty face system ensuring that people who come up are have some kind of public credit they they have to be able to muscle their way into power from

some legitimate system and we've seen this narrowed to such an extent that in the long run i think it's dysfunctional i don't want to say it's soviet like or something like that but if we're looking at twelve more years of this. this spoof and stability control into real stagnation. you know you're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on russian politics today with r.t. . in the faraway land. where human life is ruled by nature. the distant past of planet earth is scarcely preserved by the clear. lie

hidden in the deep permafrost. and to those who deal with them prehistoric times are still not sure. this is a city. of about one hundred ninety thousand people and we had eighty thousand people working for general motors. depended on general. general motors as if it's not relations you it might be your neighbor or somebody you knew so let's find out family run business you know myself i'm third generation my father was working there and you have a lot of two three and four generation families are there first let's understand that it is this is it doesn't work. any. it is gone. into work.

i think for a long time this notion in america that bigger was better was simply an undisputed fact in the twenty first century smarter it's going to get better general motors simply became too large for their own good and so many brands that they couldn't even keep up with they just basically became a dinosaur. very first verses of the bible is that all human beings are created with sentimental came in god's image and it doesn't say just jews are not jews. sixty to seventy percent of what i did as a combat soldier in the occupied territories was to do with the turds doing recall making our presence so we go out to some bozo they hear a knock on some doors run to the other corner of it and out religion and

nationalism not as judaism have been a part of the problem they've been part of what leads to. bloodshed if you want to bomb gaza and kill. a thousand four hundred people in a month and you want to expect that this will have no effect they're going to feel you have to be either extremely naive or extremist to be not to come here a religious jew calling another joe a nazi not the way they really understand it. and . welcome back across the computer delta mind you we're talking about to be turn of lot of here put into the presidency. ok.

ok jonathan if i can start off with you again how do you think the international community is going to see this the return of a putin presidency because i said as i pointed out earlier in the program the west seemed to like the lighter touch of mr medvedev what do you think about that. well no i think they all see this as basically continuity but i mean i think the disappointing thing really is the russia is still very reactive in its foreign policy i mean under yeltsin it was very much doing the west's bidding and certainly under putin it's now become less predictable and more nationalistic and that's fine from a russian point of view but they're still negative i think on syria they don't want sanctions on iran they don't want sanctions but they're not really taking initiatives what do you do about iran what do you do about syria on the palestinian issue which is so topical this week why wasn't the russia didn't take a strong initiative and say they really support the palestinians and it's time to grow i don't know jonathan the russians in place of turning this around as to means for twenty years in the new russia very very firmly mr medvedev even went to

ramallah and said that he supports statehood that was a few months ago i would say russia's foreign policy is extremely you would think it's very very conservative not reactive what do you think about that adrian do you think that the in the capitals of europe they're going to be happy to see mr putin back what you think about mr a maybe i don't know for mr obama is going to be back in office what do you think. well very much doubt because the lasting impression that putin gave when he was last president was the security speech in munich in two thousand and seven when he was very blunt and not only. denounced american hegemony but also said instantly brand of the rest of europe is pretty much useless so i don't know maybe that was a pretty good description i mean how things are played out right here i was the munich conference i remember it extremely well i like to point out to my viewers it was it was it could be very well received here in russia is that russia will have its own foreign policy and not kowtow to the united states and other about powers

of the united nations is the kind of reaction what you said earlier jonathan a lot of people in russia do not like how the libyan resolution was played out where you can just do whatever you want to abuse international law and still we saw a very strong strong support for the palestinians and if that irritates western powers and so be it that's russia's foreign policy what do you think i don't think they'll be any changes in russian foreign policy i think there has been a continuous. growth in russia's self-confidence on the world stage. i think they could be more they could use the weight that they've got more coherently but i also don't think they'll be major problems with people accepting another point and presidency i think we more or less expected all along and putin is predictable he's not a particularly capricious person or given to excesses he sticks to his script. and that's awfully important in a system where so much power is invested in one personality it's important

domestically to putin that he is this known quantity and a fairly predictable moderate sort of character. no i think i'm not sure that's true fred's going to be about yeah if you think about international trade or you think about corporation would be you or even bilateral relations i mean. a lot of politicians don't just implement progressive policies and i think it can be problematic but it seems also you know more than dictate streak and i don't think one could set a fairly predictable and. if you look at compare putin with medvedev i mean look at the ga ga ga's aggression against south especially i mean we still saw a lot of continuity in russian foreign policy putin would have done exactly the same thing i got to you jonathan that it might have gone further. or that's interesting i thought i could probably go in there jonathan what do you think about that do you think. that someone like mr saakashvili is going to be worried again

because or we look at politics in ukraine i mean if if adrian is right which i disagree with very strongly i think there's been a continuity from putin through made very even we'll probably see it again also with putin because russia's national interests are change even if the president changed his. no i agree with that i think there will be many calls and you actually know i think russia's relations with georgia really present and i'm very committed clear majority made it clear that as long as saakashvili is there still in charge in georgia there can be no real breakthrough and to a warming up of relations on ukraine of course since the change in power a year or so ago they're very happy with what's going on in ukraine that's not true anymore neuralgic point the issue of ukraine joining the nato and joining nato has been kicked into the long grass it's just not going to happen soon fred what you would if you want to i just think the main thing that will happen is what the process you see happening in our brains right now is we're all going to become a lot more cynical about the nature of the russian power system you know what we

saw at the united russia club congress is you know if everybody's going well how do you well this is i mean the popularity now i would i would keep grant you i grant everyone on the panel is that there are two major political figures in this country ok my kids are not that's what we've gotten and the constitution has not been circumvented i mean the man's name is going to be on the ballot and you know what most people are going to vote for him so i mean where do you where do you how do you balance cynicism versus popularised i asked fred first first go away for the first peter i lived five years in the soviet union and i didn't see anything quite completely different. in in in this process really what we see is the ballot being narrow real choice since even if there are marginal and you know have to feel the choice of three or four or eliminated long before the pellets are printed and even that spectrum of kind of what i cope with him in choices or are narrowing and this

is not a good thing for the long term health of the respectable what the population thinks of the electorate but i mean it's a little sorry but that's the facts of a sort of i'm sorry but it's the fact that right up until the collapse of the soviet union you could have been nobody voted for it got a bunch of nobody voted for president they voted on the referee in the over here and i do believe i'm going to continue to ok good adrian go ahead jump in. well putin used to pride themselves for having established a system that stable and a constitution that's respected but now in a single move he's essentially undermined that by returning after four years if you were serious about continuity and said he would have allowed president is to run again and even if people say personnel doesn't matter much it's about the institutions now we have a president who's going to be leading the united party in the parliamentary elections this is not just growing the boundaries this is now in fact to be undermining institutions guaranteed by the constitution not necessarily on the

paper that's john of your point of time i had jonathan go the other part of the extraordinary is the nih the majority are for corruption and members of this project i mean yes you must start rebuilding of a multi-party system and that means people must stand as a representative of the party members overturn meetings not just once every four years but all the time regularly try to build up mobilize you know just to have be above the party is the old czarist model basically isn't it and unfortunately you don't get into the same thing when he was there he always said oh it is a time gentlemen maybe even you can agree or disagree for you should be part of the party but there is a multi-party system here i mean you can vote for the communist if you want to ok you can vote yes on the right there is ok there is a choice but that's the only that's the only party that's not the plan on the kremlin the fact is all other parties that penned in some ways on the kremlin and what you really need in addition to a multi-party system is strong institution across the country russia has a strong central state an incredibly weak institutions in the rest of the country

those need to be strengthened. here here's the thing about the last two years under a good bit of. good bit it introduced a different tone and sometimes even a little he was talking differently and that he gave rise to a lot of hopes and you know even in the bureaucracy and in academia camps for him over the last couple of years especially in mid bit of even if it was assured from the store. a lot of people took it seriously and extorted to express different opinions according to their vision of who these two guys were right or wrong and you saw that there was. there are not not revolutionary not political people in the street shouting i'm talking of the in the mainstream of russian society there are different views of the way forward and the thing that has happened with the name of putin being proposed and put forward is that that's narrowed back to one. it's not necessarily a bad thing as i said i i don't think he was a bad leader he had

a lot of accomplishments and says that another twelve years of him gives this signal not only to the russians which is a world where we did not ask all of you here as we wind up the program here first a dream you think mr putin wants to come back or he has to come back because of the political environment that is so much attack associated with his time in politics wants to come back asked a comeback. i think it's both because he's a prisoner of the system but he clearly also has not been able to distract himself and to make room for something else so he depends on the support of groups just as those groups that played on him as a novice our family of the last word here oh i don't know you know i as i said putin's like evil guy and he also knows the problems of the country. is he if he gets another six year term and i think we know he will will he use that to make a change and this is the basic point this country really needs some departure put

in stability was fine it's. what people are are getting impatient you know what i hear it all around they want changes and must know that so you know even from within that system to encourage the growth of civil society to bring in some evolutionary democratic reforms and to make some economic changes this is within his power let's not let's not say he can't do it i suppose we have no choice but to wait and see that's our job do you still keep this image thing we believe in this program you're going to have to wait and see many things that you and i guess that in london cambridge and here in the studio and makes your viewers for watching if you're already see you next time remember profit. taking.

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