#6323
[Second Issue of the Day]
#11
Rossiya
June 24, 2002
THE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS OF PUTIN'S SECOND PRESIDENTIAL
CAMPAIGN
Author: Alexander Tsipko
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS LAUNCHED HIS SECOND PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.
President Putin will have to answer quite hard questions as he launches his
campaign for reelection
The last two years of Vladimir Putin's first presidency are not going to be remembered as a period of momentous decisions or breakthroughs. The country is gradually shifting from the post- electoral to electoral politics. Putin is forced to waste more and more time on purely ceremonial functions which only distract him from current affairs. He cannot afford to take risks or act without predictable consequences anymore.
Everybody thought only a year ago that Putin would not have to play special electoral games and that the position of the one and only master of the country would be his main PR. Everybody thought then that PR, the main policy on the eve of the presidential election in 2000, would be history, that the election would be but a procedure with a known outcome. All these hopes were related to plans to turn Putin from Yeltsin's successor into a true leader of the nation, playing an independent and even vital role in the making of Russian history. Hence the demands that he severe all ties with the Family. Yevgeny Primakov voiced the demand in the best possible manner in his unforgettable interview with Oleg Poptsov a year ago.
This never happened. And not merely because Putin lacks the guts to do away with his Family-associated past. On the other hand, Putin's moral convictions, decency, and honor, have always prevented him from making an unbiased appraisal of Yeltsin's legacy and from taking resolute measures against state officials still close to Boris Nikolayevich. It is moral convictions that will never let Putin call his own 20th Congress of the CPSU.
Everybody including Putin himself understands now that there is more to the Family than certain individuals from the inner circles of associates of the first president of Russia or state officials of a certain type. The Family is a system of relations, a system of economic, political, and moral realities nobody can ignore. Unless the person wants a revolution, of course. Particularly when there are no guarantees that a revolution against everything associated with the Family will benefit the country and Putin himself. Not all personnel decisions of the Family were mistakes. Moreover, Putin himself was chosen by the Family.
We cannot do anything about the fact that Putin is not the general secretary or that he does not control the major riches of the country concentrated in the hands of the oligarchs. We cannot do anything about the fact that the West has clout - and actually controls - the majority of the so called independent media. Like Yeltsin before him, Putin cannot afford an act or a decision which will collide with the interests of the West.
Yeltsin's frequent appearances on TV nowadays indicates that Putin has not - and could not have - abandoned his role of successor, inheritor, and pupil of the first president of Russia. In order to retain a chance for the second term in office, Putin will have to take into account the objective limitations he cannot trespass. There can be no doubts that preservation of alliance with the Family will be the major guarantee of Putin's triumph in the presidential race of 2004. It goes without saying that he should not aggravate to any greater extent his relations with governors who control the voting machine in the provinces. It is clear that on the eve of the election he should continue the course for integration into the West so as to retain even the current minimal economic chance of survival for the country and the people. It does not take a genius to see that in order to safeguard himself from the omnipotent liberal elite, Putin will have to nurture the illusion that he remains loyal to the course of continuing privatization and withdrawing the economy from state control.
This is the picture we see less than eighteen months before the next presidential race. We cannot even be sure that Putin will be the only candidate for president. The Family still has Mikhail Kasianov as the indispensable premier and a potential candidate for president. Putin lacks real administrative, financial, or informational capacities to prevent the consolidation of oligarchs and elite around Kasianov in case the Family changed its collective mind.
All the same, the major threat to Putin is not posed by the Family or the establishment. They are unlikely to change sides so drastically when the moment is so precarious. Putin the official successor is very convenient for those who wield real power in Russia. The main risks and uncertainties of the future race are associated with men and structures opposing the elite morally and ideologically. What shall be done to retain the alliance with the liberal elite and support of the "people's majority"? This is the question Putin needs an answer to and he needs it now. For example, how can he appease the liberal elite and the West who are demanding for an end to ties with Lukashenko and avoid a final and ultimate quarrel with the generals, who are convinced that the loss of Belarus will be the death of Russia? How will he secure victory in the next presidential race by the use of colossal intellectual, informational, and financial resources of those who are "with" Chubais and simultaneously not be associated with the "enemies of Russia" in the eyes of the people?
Here are but two of at least a dozen of complicated and serious questions Putin needs answers to. If, of course, he wants to retain his position of president and everything that goes with the office.
Everything indicates that Putin has begun his electoral campaign and that the campaign is going to be much more difficult in many respects than the first one. The time when being "president of hope", it suffices, is ending. The period when voters could fall for simple patriotic rhetorics and appeals to national dignity is about to end...
(Translated by A. Ignatkin)
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