RUSSIA: Putin’s Shadow Set to Rule

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Feb 29 2008 (IPS) - Russians will vote in a new presidential election Sunday that opposition leaders and human rights activists have described as a roll-call for endorsement of a Kremlin sponsored candidate and of President Vladimir Putin’s political strategy to keep power in the new administration.

Four candidates are contesting for the Kremlin post – United Russia party nominee and incumbent first deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the leader of the little-known pro-western Democratic Party, Andrey Bogdanov.

Medvedev is expected to go through in a landslide victory. Russia’s final conservative pre-election opinion poll this week has shown that he has 73 percent support, Zyaganov 11 percent, and Zhirinovsky about eight percent.

Medvedev, 42, was publicly backed by Putin as his preferred successor in mid-December. Given Putin’s popularity, his endorsement of the first deputy premier is likely to guarantee Medvedev the presidency. Putin also said he would accept the post of prime minister if Medvedev became president.

Medvedev toured several major towns throughout the country, including the vast regions of Siberia, in a pre-election campaign. He has promised to develop the economy, infrastructure, agriculture, education and healthcare. He also promised support for Russian families.

He spoke repeatedly of the need to cut administrative barriers, reduce tax to encourage innovation, and private investment in social development. The country needs political stability in order to achieve the government’s priorities for Russia’s 143 million people, Medevdev emphasised.

This development programme, now popularly referred to as Plan Putina, will be stretched over the next 12 years.

The plan is certainly popular in the republics. “The government has created favourable conditions for development of business and has achieved considerable success,” Vassily Panchenko, spokesman for Mari El administration told IPS in an interview. Mari El, a Russian autonomous republic of about 770,000 inhabitants, share borders with the two small republics Chuvasia and Tatarstan.

International observers, including a 25 member-delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), arrived Thursday to monitor the election. But Russia’s election chief warned observers that any comments made ahead of the polls could be considered interference in the country’s internal policies.

Head of the Central Elections Commission Vladimir Churov said after a meeting with PACE monitors in Moscow that the goal of an election monitoring mission was “correct election monitoring, excluding interference in a country’s domestic affairs.”

In an interview with the widely circulated local newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta Thursday, leader of the PACE delegation Andreas Gross said Russians will be voting without real choice. He also expressed disappointment over Medvedev’s refusal to take part in television debates. Gross said there were indications that the Mar. 2 poll would be neither free nor fair.

Gross said the absence of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the main election arm of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE, a European security organisation), would negatively affect foreign perception of the voting. The group has refused to monitor the elections in the face of limitations imposed.

“According to OSCE methodology they needed as many observers as they find necessary. But the commission gave only a few invitations to the observers the first time since 1991,” Alexey Sidorenko, programme coordinator at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, told IPS.

Dr. Lilia Shevtsova, political researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, says Medvedev has been loyal to Putin through the entire period of their relationship over 17 years, and that Putin seems more comfortable with him than any other representative from his team. Medvedev, Shevtsova said, looks the best candidate for the role of “technical president”.

Shevtsova said a likely scenario was that Medvedev is elected president, and Putin continues to influence policies, and even returns as president.

But Putin, and whoever he supports, seems to have the backing of the young, she said.

“They believe that Putin has been responsible for increasing Russia’s strength and leverage in foreign policy, that Putin brings dynamics to the country, and provides much more stability. The younger generation wants to have hope and that hope lately is linked to Putin. I think that is quite understandable because people started to live better under his regime, and Putin made Russia more prominent on the foreign policy scene.”