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MOSCOW: Six months before election season in Russia, the Kremlin is all but assured of resounding success in a climate which raises questions abroad about its democratic credentials but worries few ordinary Russians.
Some Kremlin opponents have already joined Russia experts in predicting defeat for the opposition when Russians vote for a new parliament in December and a new president in March to replace Vladmir Putin whose two-term limit will be up.
All but ignored by the media and needing a huge swing away from pro-Kremlin sentiment, the opposition is riddled with infighting. Some leaders despair at the divisions while others say to unite would betray their democratic credentials.
“I don’t see enough political will to create a united opposition force in Russia,” said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former presidential candidate and independent member of parliament.
“This time, I’m afraid there’s no hope.” More than 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dominance of state-controlled media helps ensure the presidential race is a safe bet for the Kremlin.
Putin is constantly in the public eye on television and is rarely criticised in public. He remains widely popular.
Opposition protests have been broken up by police and few Russians seem interested in what Putin’s critics have to say. “It’s just a game, we know the result in advance,” said Leonid Gozman, deputy chairman United Right Forces (SPS).
At least two opposition leaders are likely to run for president, but neither has fired up opinion in a country where oil-fuelled growth and political stability have also kept the public firmly on the Kremlin’s side.
An opposition trouncing at the polls will also not affect foreign investment in Russia, with investors much more concerned about the uncertainty over who Putin will pick as a successor.
Vyacheslav Nikonov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, says between them the two opposition leaders poll less than three per cent, while the two state officials widely seen as possible Putin successors – Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov – enjoy over 30 per cent support. Putin’s ratings are over 70 per cent.
Unlike the US presidential candidates who face intense media scrutiny more than 18 months before the polls, in Russia it is Putin who holds the key to his successor’s fortunes.
He says he will not disclose his preference until December and may have a surprise up his sleeve, according to a Kremlin aide – hardly a recipe for transparency.
“People in the West will see that Russia’s democratic institutions are very weak and cannot provide a constructive alternative,” Yevgeny Volk, head of the Heritage Center’s Moscow office, said.
Opposition parties plan to fight for seats separately in December’s parliamentary election – a tactic not likely to unsettle the pro-Kremlin United Russia which now holds 68 per cent of seats or the similar, though smaller, Fair Russia.
The resistance to unification threatens smaller opposition parties with political oblivion as they will have to win at least 7 per cent of the vote to secure seats in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
Fracturing the opposition vote, the liberal Yabloko party will field its own presidential candidate, probably leader Grigory Yavlinsky, who won initial backing from the party’s ruling body last weekend.
“There are confrontations between different candidates and some, like Yavlinsky, are driven by personal ambitions, not the ambition to create democracy in Russia,” Ryzhkov, a supporter of the main Other Russia opposition movement, said.
A presidential candidate before, Yavlinsky defended his party’s strategy of snubbing the Other Russia movement.
“We are democrats and we are not ready to unite with fascists or radical communists. It’s unacceptable,” he said of the broad spectrum of protesters at nationwide anti-Putin demonstrations organised by Other Russia.
Chess grandmaster and leading Putin critic Garry Kasparov had hoped to unite a broad coalition behind a single candidate by ruling himself out.
But Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who joined the opposition after he was sacked, undermined Kasparov’s plan by saying he would stand for president regardless of who was selected at an opposition congress next month.
Nikonov, the analyst, said polling data showed all leading opposition candidates for president command only tiny shares of the vote. Yavlinsky would win no more than 1.5 per cent support and Kasyanov just 1 per cent, he said.
“None of the public opinion polls have identified a single Russian citizen who would be prepared to vote for Kasparov,” he told an investment conference in Moscow this week.
None of the opposition candidates manages to get out of single digits even in more generous polls.
Volk said an economy buoyed by high energy prices, rising incomes and stability would keep the lid on dissent.
“It looks to me like Mr Putin’s legacy will be very controversial,” he said. “Compared with his predecessors, he took the wrong path towards a more authoritarian rule and a more arrogant, Soviet-type foreign policy.”
—Reuters
