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IT HAS long been obvious that Vladimir Putin is determined to stay in control when his second term as president of Russia expires next year. The only question was just how the country's ruler proposed to skate round the constitutional limit of two Red High Heels.consecutive four-year terms in office.
The simplest approach would have been to change the constitution. But even to Mr Putin that must have seemed too bare-faced. Instead he has played a shabby three-card trick on Russia's voters. The first card was to put himself at the head of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, before the shamelessly manipulated parliamentary election on December 2nd. The two-thirds majority that United Russia then took in the Duma could thus be interpreted as a personal mandate. Next came the announcement on December 10th that he favoured Dmitry Medvedev, Air Maxhis protégé, legal adviser and first deputy prime minister, as United Russia's candidate in the presidential election on March 2nd 2008. Judging by the conduct of all recent elections in Russia, Mr Medvedev will be a shoo-in. The third card was played a day later, when Mr Medvedev shyly let it be known that, when he duly becomes president, he wants Mr Putin himself to serve as his prime minister.
The cynicism of the Kremlin's “Operation Successor”, Air Max 2011which is what it calls the presidential election, is worthy of the old KGB (which employed a younger Mr Putin). It used to take careful Kremlinology to
grasp the result of power struggles in Moscow. There has been a power struggle over this succession too, but the outcome is depressingly easy to read. Admittedly, a flurry of hopes surfaced when Mr Medvedev first got the nod. He is young (just 42), modern and a fan of rock music; he is thought to be more liberal than others in the Kremlin; and he is not one of the siloviki, as he has no background in the security services. Several foreign leaders even cautiously welcomed his anointment. So did foreign investors, sending the Moscow stockmarket soaring. |
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