Picture of uncertainty: Who's next in the Kremlin hot seat? Source: AFP/East News
Slowly but surely, the 2011-12 election season in Russia is
getting under way. In recent weeks, both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin have made appearances that pundits regard as the
beginnings of an election campaign, and analysts are watching closely to
determine whether the Tandem will remain in place after March 2012.
On May 6, during a congress of the ruling United Russia party, Mr Putin
announced the creation of the All-Russia Popular Front. This organisation will
be made up of trade unions, business associations, youth groups and
Kremlin-friendly NGOs and is intended to improve United Russia’s popularity by
giving it more of a connection to ordinary people.
The new organisation will include “everyone who is united in their common
desire to strengthen our country, united by the idea of finding optimal
solutions to the challenges before us,” Mr Putin said.
President Medvedev immediately gave the pundits reason to speculate that there
was discord between the Kremlin and the White House when he declined to endorse
the concept of the Popular Front, saying in an interview only that he
understood the reasons behind the move.
Competition is vital
“I understand the motives of a party that wants to keep its
influence over the country. Such an alliance is in accordance with the law and
justified from an electioneering point of view,” he said in televised comments.
Mr Medvedev also speculated that United Russia could not count on a landslide
in December’s State Duma elections, saying that competition was vital in a
democracy. “No one political force can regard itself as a dominant one, but any
force should strive for maximum success,” he said.
The president promoted his own agenda during a lengthy press conference at the
Skolkovo Innovation Centre on May 18. Answering questions from an audience of
more than 800 journalists, Mr Medvedev commented on topics ranging from modernisation
to gubernatorial elections to missile defence. His responses were mostly
predictable, but the conference showed him to be comfortable, confident and in
command of the issues – a man who could head a successful presidential
campaign.
The press conference followed a meeting on May 10 with judicial officials in
which the president again pressed for judicial reforms and a strengthening of
the court system, and a spring marked by a controversial plan to remove
government bureaucrats from the boards of state-owned companies.
Some analysts see Mr Medvedev’s actions as more proof that he is further
distancing himself from Vladimir Putin. A process that began with his criticism
of the prime minister’s comments on the prison sentences of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
and Platon Lebedev, continued with the leadership’s difference of opinion over
Nato intervention in Libya, and expanded with the shake-up in corporate
boardrooms.
“This is a major development, marking an independent move by Medvedev, touching
the interests of influential members of Putin’s team,” said analyst Dmitry
Oreshkin, discussing the new policies with Bloomberg.
The theme of the president’s autonomy was noted in his reaction to the
formation of Mr Putin’s Popular Front. “Medvedev is trying to demonstrate his
independence with those remarks,” Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the
Centre for Political Technologies, said in an interview with The Moscow Times .
“And it looks like the number of similar remarks will be growing soon.”
Analysts who believe that the Tandem is indeed splitting
believe that the
prime minister’s creation of the Popular Front is his way of returning to the
presidency.
Testing the Tandem
The political scientist Grigory Golosov said: “If they [establish
this new grouping], and there is no reason to think they won’t, then we can say
that Vladimir Putin will be nominated precisely by this ‘popular front’ – that
is, by all Russians who are for a better life.”
Alexander Venediktov of the radio station Ekho Moskvy agreed. “This story shows
us again that Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] certainly has not said ‘No’ to a
third presidential term,” he told the BBC.
Those who believe the Tandem will continue past 2012 say that the recent
appearances have given both politicians the opportunity to define their
different but complementary personas – Mr Medvedev the “modernist” and Mr Putin
the “traditionalist” – in the hope that one or the other will appeal to
Russia’s increasingly divided voting population.
“Like before, Putin and Medvedev tend to occupy different political niches,”
the independent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky told
Interfax. “But both
men continue to serve their common cause.”
The opposition politician Vladimir Ryzhkov even suggested that the Popular
Front initiative was in fact intended to shore up the Tandem. “He [Putin] is
attempting to halt rapidly eroding support for the ruling Tandem and the ‘party
of power’,” Mr Ryzhkov wrote in an editorial in The Moscow Times .
The television analyst Nikolay Svanidze echoed these comments. “All this
doesn’t necessarily mean it is Putin who will stand for president next year. I
believe the Tandem has not yet made a final decision regarding who is going to
run. If such a front is formed, the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, may use
it just as easily. The new platform will make it possible for either of the two
candidates to declare that he is backed by a considerable part of the people,
not just one party and its voters,” he told Russia Today TV.
Any candidate for the Russian presidency in 2012 may have to pay more attention
to the people than previously planned. According to an Levada Centre poll in
April, 75pc of Russians are interested in politics. But 83pc of respondents
believe that politicians work only to promote their own interests and ignore
the needs of voters.
This article combines reports by Business New Europe,
Interfax, Kommersant
and RIA Novosti.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
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