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Who Will Win Russia’s One-Man Election?Once again, it all comes down to Putin versus himself.
BY JULIA IOFFE | MARCH 2, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/02/who_will_win_russia_s_one_man_election?page=0,0
MOSCOW– About a year ago, when I kickedoff this column, nothing seemed more boring or futile than writing aboutthe Russian presidential election. There was only one question you needed toanswer to unlock the whole thing: Would Putin return from the prime minister'soffice to run for a third presidential term or not? (Which is why we called thecolumn "Kremlinology 2012.") Once Putin decided who was running -- himself orhis protégé-turned-President Dmitry Medvedev -- then we would know who wasgoing to sit in the Kremlin, at least until 2018. So it all seemed to come downto Putin, who was often spoken of as the country's only real voter.
In the year since, so much has happened -- the grand swap between Putinand Medvedev announced in September, the suspect parliamentary elections inDecember, the mass street protests ever since -- and some things have evenchanged. Yet, in essence, not much is really different: Going into theMarch 4 presidential election, everything is still up in the air and only oneman -- the same man -- can decide how to bring it all down again. But eventhough we now know the answer to who is running and who will win, there areeven more unknowns still to reckon with.
Yes, Putin will win, and he will win with a comfortable margin, but itis wholly unclear how accurately that will represent the popular will. In thehall of mirrors that has been the last month of opposition protests and loyalistcounter-protests -- not to mention car ralliesand countercar rallies -- it's become hard to gauge where Russian public opinion trulylies. According the latest polling done by the independent Levada Center, 66percent of those planning to vote saythey will vote for Putin. Not bad for a leader facing a wave of street protests.
But if you look more closely at the numbers, Levada sociologistDenis Volkov says, they show something else. Over the summer, when it was unclear whichof the two top leaders would actually be running, Putin had 23 percent andMedvedev had 18 percent. More than 40 percent of Russians polled said they wantedthe two to run against each other. Then, when that option was taken away onSept. 24, Putin's number shot up. "People are rooting for the winner,"Volkov told me.
On Sunday, many people will vote for Putin not only because they think he'sthe predestined winner but also because there is no one else to vote for. TheKremlin's two-pronged strategy of first slashing and burning the politicalplaying field and then bemoaning the lack of real competitors -- it's a shame,Putin once said,that his fellow democratic leader Gandhi is dead -- has worked quite well. Asit stands now, Putin faces Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist clown who hasbeen the Kremlin-sponsored spoiler for over two decades; old Putin friend and JustRussia leader Sergey Mironov (you can see just how bad a candidate he is from this campaignad);and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, about whose independence there are seriousdoubts. Putin's most serious rival, theCommunist Gennady Zyuganov, resembles nothing so much as a smooth woodcarving. Inmy utterly unscientific surveys of people at Putin rallies in Moscow andtraveling around Siberia last week, support for Putin split roughly in halfbetween the "we-love-Putin" camp and the "got-any-better-ideas?" camp. Theliberal-leaning opposition, loud and present and plentiful in the capital, issimply far less energized out there in the great Russian hinterland, where justover half the votes are.
Regardless, on Monday morning, Russia will wake up to its old-newpresident Putin, and that evening Muscovites will take to the streets inprotests, both for and against. The Moscow mayor's office has made a seriousconcession and allowed the opposition to gather at Pushkinskaya Square, in theheart of Moscow. But some in the opposition are talkingof marching downhill to the Kremlin and forming a white circle around the oldred walls. Will the authorities crack down? How many more times will cityleaders grant permits to the organizers after March 5? How much stomach willPutin have for more protests once the campaign is over and won and he has to goback to running the country?
Speaking of which, how will Putin interpret the mandate he receives thisweekend? Will we see a shift toward a more pluralistic Putin, a Putin capableof coalitions and concessions, or will we see a retrenchment, a caricature ofthe old Putin, a blustery, salty KGB-type who rules by fell swoops and diktats,a ruler to whom the people must bow? Will Medvedev, promised the post of primeminister, be allowed to continue to play the (sort of) liberal good cop? Willthe Kremlin's political concessions in the face of these protests -- the returnof gubernatorial elections and easier party registration procedures -- havelegs, or even teeth? Or will Putin continue tighteningthe screws by cracking down on independent media and opposition activists?
And what of those long overdue economic reforms? Putin's campaignpromises to raise pensions and fly Russian soccer fans to the EuropeanChampionships for free couldcost something like $161 billion. It's a price tag that pretty muchrequires oil in the $150 a barrel range in order for the Kremlin to keep itsword. That or Putin would have to raise taxes, or the retirement age --anathema to his populist policies and to his core electorate, which depends onsuch fiscally contradictory largesse.
What Putin decides to do come March 5 is "the central question, not becausePutin decides everything in politics on March 5 but precisely because he can nolonger decide everything himself," says political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky,who worked on Putin's 2000 presidential campaign but was fired by the Kremlinin the last year. "It's become a very complicated scene." The way Pavlovskysees it, there are two possible paths: modernize and reform the politicalsystem or "play the tsar." The first option is the more difficult one, but shouldPutin choose the second door, Pavlovsky predicts, "He'll become a prisoner ofhis own system, completely out of touch with reality, locked in the Kremlin andwith his minions ruling in his name. And this is the worst possible outcome."
For now, it seems Putin can't quite make up his mind. On Thursdaynight, he met with the editors in chief of major European newspapers. He wascalm and confident while monosyllabically turning down the opposition's demandsof new parliamentary elections. But just days before that, at a rally ofsupporters at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, he screamed into the microphoneof blood and sweat and meddling foreigners. It was a strange and angry speech,bizarrely out of sync with the wearily festive mood of the people who had comeout to hear him (some willingly, some not). Moreover, those who had come hadcome in peace. Everyone I asked at the pro-Putin rally -- without exception --said they didn't mind the opposition protests. "Everyone has the right to theirown opinion," the refrain went. And then Putin talked to them of blood and dyingto save the Motherland. From whom? "It's a strange, sudden turn, not reallymotivated by anything," argues Masha Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. "It's not his usual tone. His personal campaign is a lot more subtle.It's a little savage, and I think it speaks to a certain unevenness, a nervousness."
Increasingly, however, Putin's rhetoric seems to point to something alittle worse than a case of nerves. On Tuesday, at a meeting of his NationalPeople's Front, Putin spoke of the opposition, saying bluntly that they wouldhave to "submit"to the choice of the majority and avoid "imposing" their views on the majority.This kind of zero-sum language would seem to preclude dialogue. Putin followedby bizarrely speculating that his increasingly desperate oppositionwill end up searching for a "sacrificial offering" from its own ranks."They'll whack [him] themselves, excuse me, and then blame the government," he said.This kind of talk doesn't leave much room for hope; if anything, Putin seems tobe encouraging the radicalization of the still amorphous opposition againsthim. Already, anti-corruption crusader Alexey Navalny, who helped launch theprotests, has been callingfor an "escalation," and some of his activists were arrested on Wednesday for trying tohand out tents: Navalny wants to see a repeat of the great campout in Kievafter Ukraine's rigged 2004 presidential election -- the one that led to theOrange Revolution, as well as to Putin's obsession with "color revolutions" beingplotted all around him.
The Putin I've come to know in writing this column for the past year isa leader who, when presented with two options, tends to pick the easier, ifoften far stupider, of the two, especially in a tense political atmosphere. Allspring and summer, the political scene in Moscow stagnated and soured as thecity waited for Putin to make up his mind: Would he stay or go? When hefinally revealed his decision in September, it was a stunning one, simplybecause it came out seeming so shortsighted and reckless and blunt.
"It was the most obvious and therefore the least probablemove of the ones I could have predicted," Putin's chronicler, the journalistAndrei Kolesnikov told me that day as weboth stood slack-jawed in the stands following Putin's announcement. "We allwaited for this moment for a long time, and still this is a surprise preciselybecause it's so obvious." He was in disbelief, despite the obviousness, becausehe, like many others, had hoped that Putin was capable of a better, wiser decision.When the protests exploded in December, Sasha, half of the duo behind KermlinRussia, apopular Twitter political satire, ruefully pointed out to methat if Putin had let Medvedev stay another term, "none of this would havehappened." And I think he's absolutely right.
Would it befoolish to hope that, come March 5, Putin will see his mandate with the nuancethe situation requires? To hope Putin has learned that politicalcompromise and political strength can coexist? To hope that, for once, Putintakes the more difficult but ultimately more productive route of reform? Orwould it be more prudent to see what's hiding in plain sight? Again. SaysPavlovsky: "I just hope he doesn't send us to war with Tajikistan."
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发表于 2012-3-4 22:29
