By Elina Bilevskaya
People will be allowed to pose questions to the national leader
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in accordance with the tradition formed during his presidency, will conduct a live televised question-and-answer session with the people following the United Russia conference in November. The public reception offices of the Prime Minister will help organise the event, and have already begun collecting questions for the party leader.
Mr Putin is determined to hold a live video linkup. The Prime Minister's press secretary Dmitry Peskov told NG that the linkup is being prepared, though the date of the event has not yet been set. The linkup is likely to take place after the November conference of United Russia. Its format is expected to be amended. Though people, as before, will be able to put questions to Putin during a live linkup with the regions, Mr Putin will now be in a completely different role - as the national leader and leader of the country's largest party, United Russia. A source in the United Russia leadership told NG that the only thing that could hamper the linkup is the worsening financial crisis.
Preparations for the linkup are being carried out by the public reception offices. United Russia members have been meeting people and collecting questions for the Prime Minister. The questions are then being entered into an electronic database. The head of the Government will at any moment be able to get information about the topics that the people are most concerned about. People will probably talk to the Prime Minister not from frosty streets, as it was in the past, but rather from the public reception offices. This change could, however, create the problem providing adequate room for the large number of people who will likely want to ask Mr Putin questions.
The deputy director of the Institute of Social Systems, Dmitry Badovsky, sees nothing unusual in the fact that the Prime Minister has retained the right to conduct a live linkup: "Medvedev is forming his own formats: meetings with the public and addresses in the blogosphere. His video address was posted on the Internet several days ago. A live linkup is Mr Putin's personal format that appeared during his presidency."
In the expert's view this is not a presidential format: "In fact, Mr Putin served as both President and a political Prime Minister at the same time, since during his presidency, prime ministers held only technical positions. It was clear that as Prime Minister and party leader he would continue the linkup practice, and in fact more so, since a linkup is always dominated by social issues and specific requests concerning difficult situations in the regions, concerns that are closely tied to the Prime Minister's role."
As to the question of whether a linkup is appropriate at the time of a financial and economic crisis, which may soon affect ordinary people, experts believe that a linkup is more than appropriate. "It is logical that the Prime Minister would hold a linkup during a time of crisis, since he is in charge of the economy. He must tell the people what they should be prepared for and what the consequences of the crisis might be," says Yevgeny Minchenko, the director of the International Institute of Political Analysis.
"I think that the linkup, along with the conference, has been planned for a long time, even before the crisis. It is clear, though, that the crisis issue cannot be avoided and it will be a major discussion point," said Badovsky. Mr Putin, he said, could use the linkup as an opportunity to announce the measures planned by the state and to assuage social anxiety. "For the Prime Minister, it is important to