What Putin wants, Putin gets
By Michael J.W. Stickings
And what Putin the Tyrant wants is to remain in power, to maintain his autocracy, to rule Russia like the tyrants before him.
And so, barred from running for a third term as president -- damn those constitutional restrictions on his rule! -- he found a suitable surrogate, Dmitry Medvedev (profile here), to run in his place. And what a fine fellow this guy is, the perfect puppet for the task: Putin's former chief of staff and the chairman of Gazprom, Russia's largest company.
No, I'm sure he's as upstanding as they come.
No, I'm sure he's not just some loyal hack.
No, I'm sure he's not at all corrupt.
No, I'm sure he has a mind of his own.
Enough of a mind to appoint as his prime minister... Vladimir Putin.
Nicely done.
**********
But did he win yesterday? (And you can find more on the election here -- as well as a Q&A here.) Oh, yes, of course.
As the BBC is reporting, he is currently "leading with about 70% of the vote with more than 98% of ballots counted" -- this according to the Central Election Commission of Russia, which is surely also corruption-free.
He only needed a simple majority of 50%+1 to avoid a second round run-off. That was easy enough. It was a landslide -- too much of a landslike not to provoke suspicion.
Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist, seems to have finished a distant second with just 18% of the vote, but Medvedev didn't really face any serious competition. Two of the leading opposition (pro-democracy, anti-Putin) figures, Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Kasyanov, were both disqualified by the Election Commission. (No, I'm sure it was all on the up-and-up.) And so Medvedev was left to run against an old-school Communist (Zyuganov), an ultra-nationalist (Vladimir Zhirinovsky), and a vacuous liberal (Andrei Bogdanov).
How could he have lost? Well, he couldn't lose and wasn't going to. Putin made sure of that.
So much for Russian democracy. The rule of Putin the Tyrant will continue.
**********
It looks like there was fairly strong voter turnout. Which is precisely what Putin wanted -- no doubt to lend legitimacy to his blatant act of cronyism.
And was there media bias in favour of Medvedev? Of course there was.
**********
From TNR's Michael Idov, in Russia: "The question is not whether Medvedev wins; Moscow bookmakers, a gambling friend tells me, don't even accept bets on the election's outcome. They do an over-under on his getting 71 percent of the vote instead."
That pretty much says it all.
**********
For more, see a couple of background posts by Carol here and here, as well as a couple I wrote here and here (when it looked like Putin's puppet would be Viktor Zubkov, not Medvedev).
See also this post I wrote last October on Condi Rice's dismally inadequate views on Putin.
For a look at the state of Russian "democracy," see here.
For more on Vladimir the Terrible, see here.
For all our Putin blogging, see here.
And what Putin the Tyrant wants is to remain in power, to maintain his autocracy, to rule Russia like the tyrants before him.
And so, barred from running for a third term as president -- damn those constitutional restrictions on his rule! -- he found a suitable surrogate, Dmitry Medvedev (profile here), to run in his place. And what a fine fellow this guy is, the perfect puppet for the task: Putin's former chief of staff and the chairman of Gazprom, Russia's largest company.
No, I'm sure he's as upstanding as they come.
No, I'm sure he's not just some loyal hack.
No, I'm sure he's not at all corrupt.
No, I'm sure he has a mind of his own.
Enough of a mind to appoint as his prime minister... Vladimir Putin.
Nicely done.
**********
But did he win yesterday? (And you can find more on the election here -- as well as a Q&A here.) Oh, yes, of course.
As the BBC is reporting, he is currently "leading with about 70% of the vote with more than 98% of ballots counted" -- this according to the Central Election Commission of Russia, which is surely also corruption-free.
He only needed a simple majority of 50%+1 to avoid a second round run-off. That was easy enough. It was a landslide -- too much of a landslike not to provoke suspicion.
Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist, seems to have finished a distant second with just 18% of the vote, but Medvedev didn't really face any serious competition. Two of the leading opposition (pro-democracy, anti-Putin) figures, Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Kasyanov, were both disqualified by the Election Commission. (No, I'm sure it was all on the up-and-up.) And so Medvedev was left to run against an old-school Communist (Zyuganov), an ultra-nationalist (Vladimir Zhirinovsky), and a vacuous liberal (Andrei Bogdanov).
How could he have lost? Well, he couldn't lose and wasn't going to. Putin made sure of that.
So much for Russian democracy. The rule of Putin the Tyrant will continue.
**********
It looks like there was fairly strong voter turnout. Which is precisely what Putin wanted -- no doubt to lend legitimacy to his blatant act of cronyism.
And was there media bias in favour of Medvedev? Of course there was.
**********
From TNR's Michael Idov, in Russia: "The question is not whether Medvedev wins; Moscow bookmakers, a gambling friend tells me, don't even accept bets on the election's outcome. They do an over-under on his getting 71 percent of the vote instead."
That pretty much says it all.
**********
For more, see a couple of background posts by Carol here and here, as well as a couple I wrote here and here (when it looked like Putin's puppet would be Viktor Zubkov, not Medvedev).
See also this post I wrote last October on Condi Rice's dismally inadequate views on Putin.
For a look at the state of Russian "democracy," see here.
For more on Vladimir the Terrible, see here.
For all our Putin blogging, see here.
Labels: elections, Russia, Vladimir Putin
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
1:07 AM
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