Castling at the Kremlin

 

 

Vladimir Radyuhin 

 

 

 

The revolving door leadership between Putin and Medvedev has angered Russians who believe that it violates the spirit if not the letter of the constitution. 

Vladimir Putin will be sworn in as Russia's President for a third time on May 7 stepping down as Prime Minister and succeeding Dmitry Medvedev to whom he handed over the presidency four years ago.

 

The posh inauguration ceremony in the grand Kremlin palace, to be attended by nearly 2,000 dignitaries and followed by a caviar-and-champagne reception, will mark the triumph of Mr Putin's strategy of reclaiming the top Kremlin job which he left in 2008 bowing to the constitutional limit of two “consecutive terms.”

 

With Mr. Medvedev now shifting to the post of Prime Minister, the two leaders will continue to govern in tandem. The job switch in the Kremlin, described in Russia with the chess term “castling,” will bring little change to the Russian power equation since Mr. Putin has never let the reins of power slip from his hands. But it will put Mr. Putin's official status in line with his role as the all-powerful leader.

 

‘Weakened a strong presidency' 

Mr. Putin's return has split Russian society. Many people are glad that Russia is getting back a strong leader. Mr. Medvedev was a manifestly weak President, but made a perfect placeholder. He lacked a power base, was more of a bureaucrat than a politician and had abiding loyalty to Mr. Putin. A plus point was that Mr. Medvedev stood out as a younger and more liberal leader who loved rock music, spoke English and had never served in the security services. This helped advance the “reset” in Russian-American relations and gave Russians the hope for change.

 

But experts said that Mr. Putin's succession game has undermined the office of the President. Mr. Medvedev's weakness made him the butt of biting jokes. He was derided as “Twitter-President” and “‘iPhone'chik” for his childish infatuation with electronic gadgets, as well as “nano-President” and “invisible President” for his failure to make an impact on Russian politics.

 

“In the end, Mr. Putin has weakened a strong presidency — an institution he spent so many years building up,” said Prof. Konstantin Sonin of the New Economic School in Moscow.

 

While conservative sections of Russian society have welcomed Mr. Putin's comeback, the better educated urban classes are riled by the succession carousel that violates the spirit, if not the letter of the constitution. Many Russians voted against Mr. Putin's party, United Russia, in parliamentary elections in December, and took to the streets to protest the vote rigging in its favour. 

The December demonstrations were the biggest protests Russia saw in 20 years, but were largely confined to Moscow and St. Petersburg and failed to resonate with the provinces. They did not prevent Mr. Putin from winning the presidential race in March. He scored an impressive 63 per cent, even though independent monitors claimed his result was inflated through vote manipulation in order to avoid a run-off. In a significant setback, for the first time Mr. Putin lost the election in Moscow where fewer than 50 per cent voted for him. Yet even discounting the “doctored” votes, Mr. Putin would have won hands down. Experts said, however, that the nature of Mr. Putin's electoral support has changed.

 

“Putin is no longer the ‘President of all Russians' he used to be during his first two terms in office,” said Valery Fyodorov, head of the All-Russian Centre for Public Opinion Studies. “The majority voted for him as the best in the fray.”

 

Indeed, voters had little real choice as Mr. Putin ran against a select bunch of harmless sparring partners – Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, shriek nationalist Vladimir Zhironovsky, former Upper House Speaker Sergei Mironov and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, none of whom stood any chance of winning.

 

“If the list of candidates were different, the election outcome could have been different too, as it would have also been different if the protest rallies began earlier, a year before the elections,” said pollster Fyodorov.

 

In response to anti-government demonstrations the Kremlin initiated political reforms, but as the wave of protests ebbed it crafted the reforms in a way that would minimise damage to Mr. Putin's authoritarian “power vertical.” The draconian registration rules for new parties have been eased, but parties are banned from forming election coalitions so that the anti-Kremlin vote will be split between dozens of dwarfish parties. Direct elections of governors in Russia's 83 regions, cancelled seven years ago, have been restored, but hedged with “filters” designed to lock out opposition candidates. The opposition's demand for independent public television has been granted, but its director will be appointed by the President.

 

Putinism is over 

During the election campaign, Mr. Putin denounced protesters as Western agents seeking to stage a subversive “coloured revolution.” However the anti-Kremlin movement has not dried up and is now spreading from Moscow to the regions. In the past few weeks, the opposition won mayoral elections in the industrial cities of Tolyatti and Yaroslavl and staged a mass hunger strike to force the court investigate claims of vote fraud in the Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan. Experts predict the new civic activism will eventually cause tectonic political changes in Russia.

 

“Putin has returned as President, but Putinism as a system of government dominated by one man is finished,” said political scientist Alexei Malashenko.

 

Mr. Putin for one does not share this view. The new opposition has so far failed to organise and the next election is not scheduled till 2018, as the presidential term was extended from four to six years during Mr. Medvedev's presidency. Mr. Putin said he does not rule out running again in 2018, when he will be only 65. Mr. Medvedev, for his part, hinted that he could once again succeed Mr. Putin when the latter serves out his new limit of two presidential terms.

 

“I've never said that I will not run for office again,” Mr. Medvedev said at a meeting with students at the Moscow State University earlier this year. “I will remind you that I'm only 46 and this is not an old enough age to give up any future political battles.”

 

Asked in a farewell television interview last week how long the tandem can govern, Mr. Medvedev said: “Everybody should relax. This is for a long time.”