THERE IS an irony for Vladimir Putin in the reality that he probably does command majority, albeit declining, support in Russia and yet feels the need to bully his way back into the Kremlin. The democratic legitimacy of his third-time election as president is tarnished, his mandate and authority qualified, by an election campaign in which fraud and intimidation have been widely reported. Not to mention his success in keeping oppositionists off the ballot paper.
Monitors for the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, currently chaired by Ireland, say there was abuse of state resources, monopolisation by Putin of media time, and no real competition. The EU yesterday concurred. Golos, an independent monitoring group, says it has registered at least 3,100 reports of violations nationwide. Not so, Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov responded with all the certainty of an old Soviet apparatchik: “There were practically no serious violations.”
“We have won!” Putin, tears streaming down his right cheek – Botox tears, the Russian media was saying – told tens of thousands of his supporters on Manezh Square, outside the Kremlin. “We have gained a clean victory!” Dream on. Nothing is resolved, Mr Putin. The election and your comfortable 64 per cent vote will not be the line in the sand that you might have hoped. Protests will continue, as they did yesterday, the opposition radicalised by the blatant fraud witnessed first in December’s parliamentary elections, which saw a sharp decline in your party’s support, and now even more openly.
In the capital Moscow and St Petersburg in particular, the alienation of the country’s important growing middle class will gnaw increasingly at the ability of the government to rule. We are seeing the beginning of the end of the Putin era played out – prospects for a fourth six-year term from 2018 seem remote.
The hope of some that a new term might see Putin move at last on to the path of reform, particularly on corruption and economic liberalisation, appears forlorn. Russia is in for six more years of the same. Putin pandered to his base by throwing money before the election at everything from nuclear missiles to kindergartens, and public sector pay rises put at 1.5 per cent of GDP. Yet Russia’s soaring government spending, in the last five years up from below 30 per cent of GDP to almost 40 per cent, now requires a $117-a-barrel price for oil, up from $34 in 2007, to balance the budget. That is a very dangerous tightrope to walk.