While giving comments on suggested amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation Sergey Obukhov, CPRF CC Secretary, Doctor of Political Science in his recent interview stressed the high level of division in Russian society in respect to this issue.
Today almost 48% of respondents stand for and 47% are in opposition to zeroing out presidential term limits which will give Vladimir Putin an opportunity of reelection for two more terms after 2024.
He noted that if the elections were held on the preselected date of April 22, 2020 the government would have the necessity to falsify the results of the national referendum. Partly these facts were confirmed by Levada Centcal Agency on the basis of public opinion polls with the results different from the official Kremlin ones.
However, the pandemic of coronavirus will promote the increase of Vladimir Putin’s popularity along with consolidation of the nation around him.
As an example S. Obukhov mentioned the situation with pandemic in the US highlighting the growth of Donald Trump’s rating up to 47.1% with further perspective. Likely it is happened due to the US administration financial aid of 2 trillion dollars as social support.
CPRF CC Secretary noted that the Russian authorities still have the trust of the nation. Nationwide fight against pandemic inevitably promotes an increase of that trust. We are unaware about the day of depletion of governmental financial reserves as well as the beginning of probable economic recession but in any case there are no neither legal sense nor political necessity in referendum.
At the end of the interview, he stated that today the situation is in abeyance: the COVID19 could either strengthen or destroy Mr.Putin’s rating.
CPRF CC
International Department