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Mainstream, VOL L No 13, March 17, 2012

Russia: Putin has Won the Presidential Election but Formidable Challenges Persist

Tuesday 20 March 2012

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by R.G. GIDADHUBLI

On March 4, 2012 Russia witnessed an impor-tant event in its contemporary history when the highly debated presidential election was held; and this was monitored by thousands of Russian and foreign observers. The Central Election Commission (CEC) declared that among the five contestants, Vladimir Putin received 63.75 per cent of the votes while Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov received 17.19 per cent, independent candidate Mikhail Prokhorov 7.82 per cent, Liberal Democratic Party head Vladimir Zhirinovsky 6.23 per cent and ‘A Just Russia’ party leader Sergei Mironov 3.85 per cent.
As expected, there were allegations and counter-charges evident from the fact that some election observers, including the Golos head, claimed fraud and intimidation in voting, ballot- box stuffing and carousel voting in different parts of Russia. The CEC chief, Vladimir Churov, denied the allegations and Stanislav Govorukhin, Putin’s campaign manager, called the election the “cleanest in the history of the Russian Federa-tion”. Political analysts and some Russian ex-perts, including Fyodorov and Dmitry Orlov, have opined that Putin’s victory was extremely convincing, but this is not shared by foreign analysts. Strong differences exist between Zyuganov, who contended that he could not recognise the election as fair, honest and worthy, and Putin who, while initially claiming that election was fair and an open fight, later admitted that violations might have occurred thus indirectly conceding some space to the inter-national monitors who have opined that the election was unfair.

Looking back, in this election battle Putin has passed through the worst period in his political life. Dramatic changes in Russia from political apathy to political activism became abundantly visible from the unprecedented scale of anti-Putin campaign launched by several Opposition party leaders and groups subsequent to the nomination of Putin on September 24, 2011; this was aggra-vated after allegations of fraud in the parliament (Duma) elections in December 2011. Several thousands of Russians participated in the anti-Putin campaign holding banners screaming ‘We Hate Putin’, putting up posters opposite the Kremlin across the river Moskva and showing Putin behind bars in a 50-second documentary via the internet. All these created a situation leading to the decline in Putin’s popularity and there was a feeling that he might not win in the first round of election. In fact Putin did not imagine nor expect such a reaction against him since on his part there was no violation of law when his name was proposed to contest for the presidential election and he also insisted that there were no violations in the Duma elections. However, his true courage and leader-ship quality under such adverse conditions became clear when he declared that if he wanted something he would take it to its logical conclusion or else to its maxi-mum effect. This is precisely what he has done for his success. In view of this several questions arise. How has Putin managed to convert the adverse conditions to those favourable to him? What strategy and policy measures were adopted by Putin? What challenges Putin might face in the years to come? An effort has been made here to look into some of these issues.

TO counter the influence of the campaign against him, Putin worked out a well-thought-out and comprehensive strategy of stepping up the campaign in his favour by personally taking decisions and reaching out to different sections of society by writing articles on social and political issues besides appearing on state TV channels. Equally significant was the role of film-maker Govorishkin and the aggressive ‘steam roller’ Vlachislav Volodin, whom Putin inducted as his chief political strategist, replacing Vladimir Surkov who was considered to be liberal. Both of them in addition to many others in the team worked hard to bring about a qualitative change in the campaign; as opined by Brian Whitmore what emerged finally was a real political technology ensuring a political base for Putin.
There is no denying the fact that the Putin team adopted the policy of mass mobilisation; activists from trade unions, state employees, teachers, workers were indusced join the demonstrations and even money was promised to them. To counter the role of the younger generation in the anti-Putin demonstrations and their impact on the younger generation, the pro-Putin team inducted activists of Nashi which is known for nationalist and radical views, Young Guard, Stal (Steel) etc. who carried banners ‘Great Russia Needs a Strong Leader’, ‘No Chaos’, ‘We are against Orange Revolution’, and they also indulged in an ‘infor-mation war’ on the internet. The pro-Putin team was not hamstrung by criticism of unfairness in the campaign since their perception was that all was fair in love and war. The Putin team did not hesitate in resorting to the alleged use of force, utilising the state administrative apparatus liberally for Putin’s benefit, highlighting the importance of the stability factor in their campaign and reminding that the alternative was a variatioin of the ‘Colour Revolutions’ and chaos. Equally significant was that Putin reached out to the educated middle class, which accounts for about one-third of the population, in his speeches and articles promising to increase the pensions and salaries of teachers in schools, lecturers, doctors by 2018 and at the same time criticising the increasing role of the bureau-cracy, corruption, pathetic infrastructure and so on. On some of the issues for which Putin has been highly criticised such as the poor investment climate, ‘managed democracy’, lack of political reforms, Putin has not hesitated to ignore those while promising to improve them and bring about several changes in society.

KNOWING the pride of a strong Army in the psyche of the Russians, Putin assured to revive Russia’s traditional military might by rebooting the slug-gish military to the tune of $ 770 billion in about eight-to-10 years. The proposal to carry out military reforms and modernise the equipment and technology of the defence sector assumes significance as these have been lagging behind in many ways. At any rate by these statements Putin has demonstrated that Russia will not trail the West; thus he was able to get wider support of the Russian Army for his candidature.

There is a mindset developed over a few centuries among some sections in Russia that they need a strong leader like Peter the Great, Pyror Stolypin, Stalin and hence there was preference for Putin, well acknowledged as a strong leader who started his career as a mid-level KGB officer in the 1980s, against his relatively weak Oppo-sition candidates. This is amply evident from the statement of the President of Russia’s southern Republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, who praised Putin, stating that Russia needed a “Czar” rather than a manager as the head of state. Similarly, Army commander Vladimir Shamanov thanked Putin for bringing stability in Chechnya with determination; this assumes importance since Putin has received threats by Chechen rebels of assassinations including the one in February 2012. Moreover, Putin has strong support from his conservative political group as also the Silo-viki clan, which comprises security services veterans, for his policy of guaranteeing stability. It is a fact that for over a decade Putin has managed to control conflicting groups in policy-making circles and hence knows how to balance power. In view of this, a strong opinion that prevails and is admitted by a section of the educated class is that there was no ‘Alternative Strong’ candidate in comparison with Putin. Post-election agitations and protests have been firmly put down.

In conclusion it may be stated that Putin got both bouquets and brickbats. He has tried to hit back at those who sought to challenge him; and he managed to get more bouquets than what he had expected. In fact notwithstanding weeks of agitations, there is a considered view that there was no strong political organisation, no equally capable leader, no alternative power structure to emerge so far to replace the United Russia party and seriously challenge Putin’s leadership. At the same time it appears that Putin has made too many promises in his election campaign and fulfilling them is going to be quite difficult for him even as he has asserted after winning the election: “Everything my colleagues and I had been talking about, it is all doable and will be fulfilled.”

There are several indications that even though Putin has won, the situation might not be totally normal and peaceful in the near future. There is understandable skepticism about smooth gover-nance in the background of mass agitations that might get accentuated by the anti-Putin crusades spearheaded by Aleksei Navalny, along with other Opposition party activists. In fact there is a social and cultural divide in Russia between the globalised urban elite as against the traditional masses dependent upon state support and fearful of change; the latter supports Putin. Hence the ‘Trust Deficit’ will persist; that has been created due to some of Putin’s former policy decisions such as over-centralisation including the appoint-ment of Governors, lack of transparency in decision-making, lack of independence of the judiciary, excessive growth of the bureaucracy etc. These will continue to be the major sources of conflict between Putin and his opponents. Prokhorov’s sister, a prominent literary critic and cultural historian by profession actively cam-paiging in favour of her brother, has opined that there is an “incredible rift” between ordinary Russians and the ruling elite. Hence these sections do not believe that the promises made by Putin will be imple-mented in reality despite his announcement to foreign journalists on the eve of the election of his intention to introduce liberal reforms. There is a feeling that once in power Putin might revive the tough authoritarian regime as he did during his earlier presidency. Equally challenging will be the task of improving the investment climate and mobilising enough resources for investment that Putin has promised (which former Finance Minister Mikhail Kudrin, a close ally of Putin, doubts can be realised) to solve the formidable problems facing Russia many of which were created over the past decade. In fact Putin may have to make serious efforts to reverse some of his policies to attract foreign capital and technology for modernising and strengthening the Russian economy.

While the Putin-Medvedev tandem might continue even after Putin takes over the presi-dency in May, how far the efforts made by Medvedev in resetting the button with the USA during the last couple of years will succeed seems to be a big question due to Putin’s aggressive power projection with the United States. The agitations might go on and Putin might continue to face serious challenges both at home and abroad; hence he will have to make serious efforts to avert any worst case scenario of ‘Moscow Spring’ similar to the ‘Prague Spring’ about which some critics have already speculated.

Dr R.G. Gidadhubli is a Professor and former Director, Centre for Central Eurasian Studies, University of Mumbai, Mumbai.

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