#14
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
June 21, 2002
DOES CHUBAIS HAVE A CHANCE?
Chubais might be able to offer serious competition to Putin
Author: Nikolai Zhuravlev
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

LOOKING AHEAD TO THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. AT THE MOMENT, PUTIN'S TEAM SEEMS TO BE RATHER WEAK, SINCE MUCH TIME HAS BEEN WASTED ON MINOR PROBLEMS. THEREFORE, THE IDEA OF ANATOLY CHUBAIS WINNING THE ELECTION ISN'T AS IMPOSSIBLE AS IT SOUNDS AT FIRST.

No matter whom you tell that "Chubais will become president," people only waving their hands and say: "Never!" However... "never say never."

The next presidential election will be called in 18 months and the time for political ambitions has come. Is there an alternative to Putin already after his first presidential term? If we are at least a bit democrats, we need a real, not a decorative (as in Uzbekistan of late, where an opponent to the current head of state has voted against himself) alternative. Will there be conditions enabling such alternative and its acceptance for a struggle? Everything seems to be proving the fact that there are no and will never be such conditions.

However, this is a myth of PR officials, who have intensively been short in memory. But they need to recall a serious of very significant circumstances, primarily the outcome of the latest presidential elections. If the absolute majority of those who voted in favor of Putin is compared to the overall quantity of the electorate, the former will only make one third, despite even unprecedented in its impudence propaganda under advantageous conditions, which followed a camouflaged coup under the New Year's tree.

In my opinion, deciding in favor of Putin, Yeltsin had been fully aware of the fact that Putin had been a person without affiliates, would therefore be unable to carry out decent personnel rotation, which should naturally accompany any change of the leader.

The real situation in the country demands most resolute and tough actions from its leader. It will be a failure without a well-manned team. As is seen, there's no team thus far. However, now there's deficiency for time. Over the 18 months left before the start of the election campaign, Putin cannot be running the risk of taking measures even though reasonable, but fraught with a temporary outbreak of indignation among the population or among his closest affiliates (it is unknown what is worse).

Most significantly, no real progress in the economy is and will be anticipated. (...) The percentage of growth, which is being stated with aspiration is not even worth discussing, since it is a result of precise intensification of labor at specific enterprises of some industries. There is no trace of equipment or technologies being changed, or real reconstruction of the economy. How intensively will this all collapse is only the matter of a short interval.

This suggests the next question: will Putin be able to become the iron hand to grasp Russia as its hair and take it out of an abyss? Judging by the efforts he has spent on creation of a new bureaucratic tumor in the shape of totally inefficient federal districts, on forcing the Soviet anthem through and other deeds of the same nature, he won't be able to. The time of resolute actions has almost been missed. It should be frankly admitted that mainly not through the guilt of Putin, but Yeltsin, who had surrendered his authority to a politician with a wittingly limited efficiency.

The behavior of his political confidants (recall these ABC books, busts, carpets, skies, T-shirts, a flow of sweet biographies, etc.) doesn't increase Putin's odds to succeed, letting alone the squabble between old apparatus members, members of the St, Petersburg team and intelligence agents, which has been paralyzing any efficient work.

This very inner weakness is the major source of danger of creeping into authoritarianism, anti-democracy, a police state; since a strong power never needs interior troops, censors, presidential envoys, etc.

By virtue of his career, Putin cannot wholesomely avert the security agencies as such. In the meantime, a democratic politician is taking them as a something fully inevitable and keeping them under sever civil control.

This is one of the main discrepancies between Putin and Chubais, the latter being leader of a semi-ruling, semi-oppositional party. This is the point where an irreconcilable (as I hope) confrontation between them surfaced. The threat of creeping into a police regime induces if not Chubais in person, then his affiliates to raise the issue of a real alternative to Putin.

Since Russia now has no other politician equal to his weight to Putin than Chubais, Anatoly Borisovich's odds should be considered seriously as well.

The privatization he had carried out is being rather fairly categorized as predatory. At the same time, it is forgotten that taking into account the people who had been raised in the Soviet Union, the privatization couldn't have been different in Russia.

In the course of his work, Chubais had recommended himself as a highly efficient team player: if attacking he played center forward, if defending - an attacking back. Therefore, the vigor with which he had carried out the privatization caused all the fulmination and indignation. However, time is a good healer; everything has been gradually calming down and the voice of the "expropriator" will eventually be heard.

(Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin)