The Foreign Minister, Asta Dahn, has told Progressive Centrist colleagues that she will oppose the Prime Minister’s support for Gennadiy Artamova’s newly announced economic platform in a private note.
Dahn’s comments were uncovered through the leak of a party briefing memorandum that was passed to a national newspaper. Saying that the Prime Minister’s position was ‘ridiculous’ and a ‘wasted opportunity’, Dahn urged her colleagues in the Assembly to write to Prime Minister Fedorov stating their ‘displeasure in the strongest words possible’ and hinted at a potential leadership challenge to his governing authority.
It is not the first challenge to Fedorov’s leadership – but is the first posed by a member of his top team in a return to disputes at the top of the party. The Prime Minister previously saw off questions over his performance during the 2013 Legislative Elections where the Progressive Centrists narrowly retained their majority due to a political pact with right-wing conservatives.
Today’s comments by Dahn reveal that she has convinced these independent members to back her in opposing the president’s agenda – effectively eliminating the Prime Minister’s majority in the lower house. Dahn and her closest colleagues, thought to include Governor Inna Razin of Chimsk and Yevcimir representative Fabian Meyer, object to the President’s plans to delay the reduction of public debt until the economy reaches 3% growth – the government’s growth target.
Since 2009, the introduction of the debt pay-off cap has stood at 1.5%, of which the economy is expected to reach at the end of the year – the highest it has been since 2007.
Fedorov has proposed supporting the move in exchange for a reduction in personal tax rates – that the Union Party said it ‘would not block’ following a meeting between the Prime Minister and Federal Council leader Ivan Tattar last week. The decision has infuriated Centrists who see it as a betrayal of their manifesto in 2013. Dahn’s memo calls the move ‘braindead’ and goes on to say that the “entire political narrative of the Centrists has been restoring growth to pay off the vast debts the Unionists wracked up in government. Without that message or that commitment our hopes for a majority in 2018 [the next Legislative Elections] is both slim and at risk.”
The views of some of Fedorov’s top ministers are not known – particularly those of Finance Minister Benjamin Usan whose expected intervention may settle the matter. However close confidants to the Prime Minister have dismissed the note and its contents as ‘political games’ designed to raise Dahn’s profile, speculating that she is frustrated within her role at the Foreign Ministry and would prefer another role in government. Dahn was formally the Education and Healthcare Minister but has served as Foreign Minister since being appointed in 2013 – replacing former presidential candidate Marina Yanaka. Her career so far has seen her as one of the highest achievers within the party and has been rumoured as a potential future Prime Minister.
