Interfax: Communists unhappy with Putin advocacy of “liberal economic model”

MOSCOW. Dec 12 (Interfax) – One of the leaders of Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF) has slammed President Vladimir Putin for allegedly hyping a “liberal economic model” but credited him with “a desire to pull the political and economic train out of the station called Stagnation.”

Ivan Melnikov, KPRF first deputy leader and first deputy chairman of the State Duma, was commenting on Thursday’s annual presidential message to parliament.

“The presidential message was again strictly based on the set of values of the liberal economic model. We heard practically nothing either about social justice or about any progress in dealing with the problem of wealth-based stratification. We naturally can’t accept this course and this approach,” Melnikov told reporters.

“For the first time it was mentioned in clear terms the numerous problems that our country has come up against are internal in nature,” he said.

“On the one hand, it was a clear signal that patience is getting to an end, there were final and public hints that one should put one’s iPad aside and work,” Melnikov said.

On the other, “we must realize that what we see are more acute symptoms of an administrative crisis where there is a huge gap between the complexity of tasks and people’s ability to carry them out effectively and comprehensively,” he said.

At the same time, Melnikov hailed “the set of concrete proposals for support for basic and applied research in medicine, for boosting non-commodity exports, for stimulating investment in monocities, and for new advanced preferential conditions for the real sectors in Siberia and the Far East.”

“Undoubtedly, the same category includes the new interesting measures that can make action against offshore businesses more effective. As regards the patent system for migrants, it’s difficult to say offhand how effective this option would be. The KPRF group in parliament has proposed other mechanisms. But it deserves support that a solution is being looked for among economic regulators,” Melnikov said.

He claimed that “direct borrowing of Soviet experience and social and economic principles of the KPRF” is an increasingly frequent practice.

However, election system issues and political issues in general essentially remained undealt with, he said.

He pointed out “the words of the president about the importance of public participation in the life of the country, about public control, and even about the further development of the human rights movement.”

“If you look at the message holistically, using the entire set of coordinates – geopolitical, financial, economic, social, – the central problem, that of choosing the course, remains unsolved. We are convinced that correct fragmentary measures and proposals cannot take the nation to the qualitatively new era of an advanced social security system and a powerful non-commodity-based economy. It is a systemic problem. And therefore the KPRF will continue to fight for changing the course,” Melnikov said.