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Novaya Gazeta appears to have reached a compromise with the
Krasnodar judge who won an unprecedented $1 million libel suit
that threatened to bankrupt the Immediately after hearing President
Vladimir Putin's speech, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov
wrote a letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
The letter proposed that the two men work together to draft
legislation on making information about the government public,
Mironov said.
"The head of the state has paid attention to that, and
I think that we should bring down the omnipotence of bureaucrats,"
he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Mironov joined many of the political elite in praising Putin's
address as a reasoned and balanced review of the past year with
a clear set of policy priorities for the future. But some liberals
asked whether the good intentions envisioned by the president
would ever materialize into solutions for the nation's vital problems.
Deputy State Duma Speaker Irina Khakamada said the address was
liberal, matching the program of her Union of Right Forces, or
SPS, party. She praised Putin for stressing the necessity of government
reform.
"This is a response to the main domestic challenge: how
bureaucracy will fight itself," Khakamada said in an interview.
Mikhail Margelov, head of the Federation Council's committee
on foreign policy, said the core of Putin's speech -- the need
to make Russia competitive globally -- was a good sign that the
country would find its place in the post-Cold War world.
"I especially liked the part about tough competition in
the economic sphere," he said as he was leaving the Kremlin
hall. "Its presence [in the speech] means that Russia indeed
is strategically aiming to take a worthy place among economically
developed countries and that the only possible form of competition
it recognizes is competition in the economic sphere."
But other liberals criticized the speech as rich in intentions
and declarations but short on concrete steps and deadlines.
SPS leader Boris Nemtsov said Putin did not come up with answers
to burning issues such as the unpaid salaries of teachers and
doctors and failed to analyze his own mistakes.
Nemtsov gave Putin some credit for mentioning the need to switch
to a professional army but complained that no dates were given
for the start of military reform. "We can assume that nothing
concrete will be done," he told Interfax.
Nemtsov also criticized Putin for failing to start negotiations
with the Chechen rebels, saying that without peace talks the "Chechen
problem will remain unsolved for another 100 years."
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said the speech was aimed
at pleasing the West rather than at proposing solutions to national
problems.
"The address was aimed at the Americans and Europeans rather
than the nation itself," he said, in remarks carried by local
news agencies.
Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, was
more concerned about how Putin's ideas would be implemented.
"This address leaves great worries over who will be implementing
them and how," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
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