Dmitri Medvedev refuses to debate, is conducting a low key campaign, and has no identifiable platform. Yet, he leads the polls with an overwhelming 71 percent. The Russian Presidential Election officially kicked off on Saturday and Tsarevich Dmitri might as well start picking out his office furniture. Thank god the Russian electoral season is only a month long. Could you imagine having to follow Medvedev around as he meets with Cossacks, bows his head in honor of the fallen in the Battle of Stalingrad, and urges Russian businessmen to start scooping up firms abroad? It’s no wonder that 65 percent of Russians have no idea what he stands for. I guess that doesn’t matter in the world of Russian politics. No one knew what Putin stood for in 1999. Come to think of it, I would be hard pressed to explain what Putin stands for now.
The Western press rightly calls Russia’s election is a farce. Well, duh? It doesn’t take much political acumen to point that out. Since we are all in agreement on this, perhaps its time for all the Kremlinologists, Transitologists, pundits, and other so-called Russia experts to concentrate on what this election does mean for Russia? Inquiring minds want to know.
Western journalists might dismiss Russia’s election as a caricature of democracy, but the fact remains that the Kremlin is taking it seriously. So seriously that it appears everything has been done to prevent any surprises. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has been removed from contention thanks to the Electoral Commission’s assertion that 13 percent of his signatures were “faked or unverifiable.” All of Medvedev’s meetings with journalists are carefully orchestrated. Putin has ordered the FSB to be on notice to prevent “any attempts to interfere in [Russia's] domestic affairs.” In fact, the entire Russian state should keep its ear to the street. “The task of all state structures is to make sure that [the polls] are democratic, that there is social and political stability,” Putin ordered citing “terrorism” as a possible threat.
Medvedev may be a shoe in for Prez, but I think the real winner in all this is Viktor Zubkov. According to unnamed top Kremlin adviser, Zubkov will most likely replace Medvedev as Gazprom chairman. Zubkov’s pupils must be radiating dollar signs.
Indeed, the Russian presidential elections look to be shaping up as expected. Putin’s successor is a shoe in. The revolving door between the state and capital continues to spin. After some initial infighting, the siloviki seem to be adjusting to the new reality. Real or imagined political challengers and threats have been sidelined, if not outright eliminated. The Russian public is tagging along lock step. If “democracy” is “social and political stability” as Putin seems to suggest, then things are humming right along. All that needs to answered is what the future holds.
{ 9 comments }
Cossacks! Hooray!
I had thought that Medvedev’s January 22nd speech outlined his platform fairly clearly.
More of the same. Plus no more “legal nihilism”.
“Russia is a country of legal nihilism at the level … that no European country can boast of. Corruption in the official structures has a huge scale and the fight against it should be a national program.”
Two days later, Semyon Mogilevich and Vladimir Nekrasov are arrested in Moscow at the World Trade Centre.
Mogilevich’s arrest appears to bring to an end one of the most colourful and picaresque criminal careers of modern times – involving money-laundering, trading in drugs, prostitution, smuggling uranium and stolen icons, and international banking fraud.
FBI officials claim the 61-year-old Ukrainian-born Russian citizen is a major figure in the international mafia world. He is wanted in the US on numerous charges, including racketeering, securities and mail fraud.
I can’t think of any American political candidate who put words into reality so quickly (in fact, the means to do so is unavailable to them). It’s like Hilary Clinton calling for national health care and the next week all of Washington D.C. has a health care plan.
I see the survey was discussed in a January 31st news article, but I wonder when the polling was done.
Good post Sean. I especially liked the first paragraph.
I think it’s always been pretty clear what Putin stands for. He set it all out in his millenium speech back in 2000 — halting national disintegration, rebuilding the state, encouraging stability and economic growth, “dictatorship of the “law,” and reasserting Russia as a power. He’s been successful at all those things, except the dictatorship of the law bit.
This is true, Chris. But I don’t know if that really says much. I mean what Russian politician would seriously be against halting national disintegration, rebuilding the state, encouraging stability and economic growth, the dictatorship of law, and reasserting Russia as a power? This doesn’t really tell me what he stands for outside of the obvious.
Yeltsin?
I think it might be a bit of a stretch to connect the Mogilevich arrest to Dima’s speech.
First of all, one can’t really deliver on a campaign promise before he/she is even elected to office, and second, why on earth had Mogilevich lived so comfortably in Moscow throughout all these recent years?
Rather it looks like his expensive protection within the Kremlin was suddenly removed, and some are pointing to all the developments surrounding RosUkrEnergo and all the noise the Ukrainians are making about getting rid of this corrupt middle man.
Gazprom and possibly Medvedev’s role in RosUkrEnergo corruption might have been considered to be an Achilles heel for his political future, and Mogilevich was seen as a liability that had to be reigned in.
But maybe not.
Bogdanov wants to join the EU – there are plenty over here in England that’ll tell you joining the EU destroyed the UK as an independent state.
Zubkov will most likely replace Medvedev as Gazprom chairman. Zubkov’s pupils must be radiating dollar signs.
Classic line!
That’s how it used to be in America long ago:
“Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun “I”–there were 81 of them in his text–and pronounced the speech “a prodigy of garrulous egotism.” The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: “When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!
“The precedent thus set by Harrison,” concluded the Adviser’s editorialist, “appears to us a bad one.”
But it wasn’t much of a precedent. Active campaigning didn’t catch on for another half century or more. (The exception was Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, the only one of the four presidential candidates that year to leave town to deliver a speech.) Candidates stayed home, receiving visitors and maintaining a quiet dignity while occasionally uncorking a speech in the neighborhood so the newspapers had something to report. Meanwhile surrogates scattered around the country, leading parades, holding rallies, and telling lies for which the candidates themselves couldn’t be held responsible.“
Comments on this entry are closed.