THE DECISION by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin to restore himself to the presidency in March next year came as little surprise on Saturday. But the announcement was a bitter disappointment to the many who would have hoped against hope to see Russia move in a more liberal, pluralist direction, confronting its endemic cronysim and corruption. The message is “more of the same”, the status quo rules.
President Dmitri Medvedev, keeping the Putin seat warm for four years to thwart the purpose of the country’s term limit rules, will return to the premiership to continue to play second fiddle to the man who has in truth never really relinquished the reins of the presidency. Putin resumes the front seat of the “tandem”, as he has described their partnership – in reality the unequal relationship is more akin to a bicycle made for one . . . with Medvedev hitching a ride on the crossbar.
And the prospect, re-election being virtually certain, is for two more terms of Putin in the saddle, taking him to 2024 when he will turn 72. That will be a quarter-century in power as prime minister and president, as long as Josef Stalin or Leonid Brezhnev.
Medvedev’s vaunted but half-hearted tilt at promoting liberalisation and “modernisation” notwithstanding, the country remains what can best be described as “soft authoritarian”. After reeling from a decade of chaos under Boris Yeltsin, it hovers in a stalled transition from communism to western democratic values, Putin’s authoritarianism tolerated by a growing middle class – estimated at 40 per cent of Moscow’s population – that is preoccupied more with its affluence and financial prospects than democratic control.
But that may be changing. After a decade of rising oil prices, Russians are more prosperous, with doubled real incomes, but the economic tide, like Putin’s poll ratings, has begun begun to ebb. Growth slowed to 3.4 per cent in the three months to June 30th, from 10.5 per cent at the start of Putin’s two consecutive terms as president.
The rouble has fallen to a two-year low against the dollar and has lost more than 10 per cent of its value since the beginning of September. Dependent on oil revenue, and with commodity prices declining generally, the country has seen a steady drain of investors. United Russia, which completely dominates Russian politics, not least because of its control of television, will face a perhaps more difficult December parliamentary election though its majority is certainly not in doubt. And even in the upper echelons of the Putin bureaucracy there are signs of emerging challenges; finance minister Alexei Kudrin, who has just been sacked, had said he would not serve in the next government under Medvedev.
The “guarantee of stability” which is Putin’s unique selling point may prove ephemeral as a restless public discovers, as they say in the ads, that “past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.”