Presidential candidate from the Communist party, Gennady Zyuganov, said on Thursday that if elected, he would combine the presidential and prime minister posts.
The president-prime minister combination is necessitated by the “severe economic crisis” and would be temporary, said Zyuganov, who is running in the March 4 presidential elections against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and three others.
Zyuganov did not specify how long the posts should be combined, but said at a press conference in Moscow that the move would help the head of state keep close track of the economy.
He also urged to revise the Constitution, slashing the vast presidential powers in favor of the government.
Speaking about his staff decisions in case of victory, Zyuganov promised to give whistleblower and blogger Alexei Navalny, who co-headed this winter’s anti-government protests, a job at the Audit Chamber. He did not comment on the rumored presidential ambitions of Navalny, who is not running in the March vote.
Zyuganov also promised to appoint his presidential rival Sergei Mironov to the post of speaker of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma. Another Kremlin hopeful, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, was proposed for inclusion on the Supreme Intellectual Council, a hypothetical analytical agency that should be given veto powers over decisions by the president and the parliament, Zyuganov said.
Another leader of the recent protests, 34-year-old leftist activist Sergei Udaltsov, should supervise the state’s youth policy, Zyuganov said. Udaltsov’s Left Front group backed Zyuganov’s presidential nomination in January.
Zyuganov, 67, has run for president three times, in 1996, 2000 and 2008, each time unsuccessfully. He can count on eight percent of the popular vote on March 4, compared to 52 percent for Putin, according to a survey by state-run pollster VTsIOM. The poll, released in late January, had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
