Putin accuses opposition of lack of agenda

MOSCOW. Dec 20 (Interfax) – President Vladimir Putin has accused Russia’s opposition of destructive ambitions and a lack of constructive agenda.

“They should have their agenda, their proposals for solutions to problems that face the country. In this sense, I very much expect that, after the law on the freedom of registration of political parties comes out, political struggles will become genuinely competitive and that a competitive political environment will be created in Russia,” Putin told a news conference in Moscow on Thursday.

“As for competition, it will grow, of course. I agree with you that more attention should be paid not to political technologies, but to legal political struggles, which should be struggles of opinions on how to solve problems that face the country,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be just that someone or other should get the hell out of here, that some or other should go away, we shall make a clean slate of the past, the world will change entirely, we are nothing but we shall be everything,” Putin said, quoting lines from The Internationale. “We’ve had that before.”

Putin also said the irreconcilable part of the opposition includes people who were in government a while ago.

“We know what they were able to build. It’s well known what kind of job they did in regional administrations in the Russian Federation – they ruined everything, – nor, for that matter, were they very efficient and in federal governmental bodies, to put it mildly,” he said.