He started doing this in December of 2001. Then continued in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Today he did it again.
Vladimir Putin held his seventh live television call-in show today, the first prime minister to do so in the history of Russia.
Live “conversations” with Putin, now leader of the United Russia party, has become a tradition during his presidency. Live TV time allocated to the occasion has been growing with every year and more questions have been coming in. People can submit their questions through political public consultation offices, the Internet or a free phone line. Last year, according to BBC, more than a million questions came in, of which Putin answered approximately 70.
According to the Russian Newspaper, the number of questions answered last year was 72. His 2007 call-in time lasted three hours and five minutes. This year he answered 80 questions in three hours and eight minutes. The questions came from 13 cities as well as other towns in eight regions of Russia.
Discussions of the topics to be addressed in the live show floated around the media days before the show itself. Even though most of them were the general ever-green, ever-important issues of economy, demographics and education, some specific details mentioned in a few stories seemed to show at least a few questions were known ahead of time. Yet, Putin’s elloquancy and knowledge of detailed data about various areas of Russia’s development have also long become a characteristic recognized by many political scientists and observers.
I will discuss specific problems mentioned during the live call-in show in my next blog.
