| Russia's lower house of parliament agreed Tuesday
to vote later this month
on a no-confidence motion in the government of Prime Minister Mikhail
Kasyanov.
The motion was tabled by the small liberal opposition Yabloko
faction and
the struggling Communist Party.
The State Duma committee agreed to schedule the vote for June
18 although
few observers believe the motion can pass through a chamber that
has shown
itself remarkably loyal to the administration of President Vladimir
Putin.
The motion collected only 103 signatures by Tuesday but would
need to win
226 votes in the 450-seat chamber for Kasyanov's government to
be
officially censured.
Should the motion pass in two successive votes, Putin would have
to either
fire Kasyanov or keep his prime minister and disband parliament,
calling
for new legislative elections.
Such a scenario has never been played out in full in Russia's
post-Soviet
history.
Some analysts and the media speculate that the motion is part
of a campaign
plan by the struggling Yabloko and Communist blocs to raise their
profile
ahead of the December 7 Duma elections.
The no-confidence motion states that "an analysis of the
socio-economic
situation in our country shows that the government of the Russian
Federation is failing to come to grips with its tasks."
Kasyanov has served as Putin's prime minister throughout the
Russian
leader's first term and political analysts predict that Putin
is unlikely
to part ways with Kasyanov before the Duma elections.
But Putin hinted in a state-of-the-nation address last month
that the next
government may be decided by the new parliamentary majority, a
comment that
suggests that Kasyanov's position in the government is less certain
than it
may seem.
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