Standing President Vladimir Putin outlined the goals set for the country for the period of the next 5 years, at his meeting with Federation Council members. This is the period during which Vladimir Vladimirovich is supposed to work as Prime Minister. Though, the post of Prime Minister is not elective, the address by Putin looked like campaigning one.

Discrepancy is characteristic feature of any election campaigning style which is understandable: to win the electors the candidate must promise much in a clear way and preferably with the use of slogans. Putin is approaching his Prime Minister’s campaign with more socially oriented slogan than doubling GDP. The new slogan is eradication of poverty among pensioners. The end being noble, the details seem to be contradictory, though.  

To begin with, officially those who earn less than the minimum living standard is are considered to be poor. The point is that there is a special minimum living standard for pensioners and this one is much less than the common minimum standard. That means that pensioners are poorer than other citizens, from the beginning, according to the law. So if we honestly want to eradicate poverty, it is necessary to equalize different minimum living standards.

Besides, if we quote the President literally, it will turn out that the matter is about raising the mean part of the pensions above minimum of subsistence. That does not mean that those who now get the pension lower than average, will be able to get above the poverty lines. Meanwhile, for honest eradication of the poverty it is necessary to raise the level of the minimal pension and then the average one would rise anyway.

The whole matter is easier about raising the wages up to the average in the budget-financed sphere, considering there is already a group of budget-paid workers who have even more than the average, these are the officials. But then it is not clear why the President called the Federation Council members to restrict from “budget-wasteful” initiatives. Even less clear is the question who such initiatives can come from. Theoretically, there might be several variants. First, it’s the senators themselves, but they haven’t been noticed make any initiatives for long. Second, it could be the Lower Chamber deputies, but Putin could order them directly as it is him who led the party of Constitutional majority to the victory in Duma elections. Third, such initiative might be originated by the future President Medvedev, but it is easier to agree with him talking tête-à-tête. So it remains Putin himself. Can it be that we deal with preventive self-criticizing here?  

No less ambiguous was the assessment of the national projects. On the one hand, Putin noted that their budget was about 10% of the financing of the corresponding branch of industry and the effect was even higher that that of the rest 90%. On the other hand, it was announced that national projects are going to be re-formatted into the state programs, i.e. into federal purpose-oriented programmes within the frames of which those ineffective 90% were allotted.

In one word, the first programming sketch by Prime-Minister-to-be Putin was ambitious but a bit messy and intrinsically chaotic. It must be amended even on the level of defining basic parameters and making them correlate with one another. Well, there is still much time before it’s May.