President Dmitry Medvedev's proposed constitutional amendment to extend the presidential and parliamentary terms faced little opposition in parliament. However, these amendments caused a very angry reaction from the opposition and some western observers. What do the reforms proposed by President Medvedev mean: an authoritarian tendency or a broadening of people's participation in politics, as Medvedev claims? We'll be talking about it with Vladimir Pligin, the Chairman of the Constitutional Law and Nation Building Committee at the Russian State Duma and the opposition politician, Vladimir Ryzhkov.
