BORIS KAGARLITSKY, MOSCOW
THE PRESIDENT’S BLUNDER
And so we are told that the Russian President Vladimir Putin stays in power. But if he becomes Prime Minister, what will Dmitry Medvedev do? Will he indeed become President?!
Such reshuffles normally end in political instability and social woes. I can only hope that the both don’t mean what they’ve claimed.
The Putin-Medvedev tandem is not a bad strategic alliance in terms of the forthcoming presidential election. Especially, given the following considerations: it is next to impossible to make the mediocre and not too popular with the citizens Medvedev frontrunner of the presidential election. Medvedev definitely lacks Putin’s enigma and charisma. So the spin-doctors in the Kremlin reasoned out that launching a “two-in-one” campaign would be much more efficient. Now we have Putin and Medvedev being marketed just like a shampoo and conditioner “in one bottle”. Let see who is the shampoo and who is the conditioner.
You might think that Putin is the shampoo, i.e. the main ingredient, and Medvedev the conditioner. But it may turn that it is vice versa.
The Kremlin bureaucrats might have intended to consolidate the state administrative system, but they have failed to do so. During the expiring year, they have been making one blunder after another, which will inevitably tell in the coming year and even further. The bureaucrats are as always indulgent to their own blunders.
During the election campaign, the authorities with the help from the bureaucrats have ruined the United Russia Party, which was quite and expensive and time-consuming project. The Party was intended to become the institutional backup of the new regime, a democratic equivalent of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but failed to become an independent political organism. The current elections testify that the United Russia Party totally depends on the administrative machine – so the Party owes its victory to the outgoing President. Normally, you would have the column to support the ceiling, but the United Russia, as well as the Just Russia Party, is a useless column pending in the air attached to the ceiling threatening to ruin the whole building.
But it was Putin who made the gross blunder. He should have to let the citizens know beforehand that he was going to stay. He then should have reorganized the bureaucratic administrative machine and have made amendments to the laws. If he was set to leave the post, he should have insisted on this decision and refuse to take up in 2008 the new post, which the courtly Kremlin bureaucrats depending on the President’s favor, are trying to talk him into.
But the President didn’t have the guts to make his choice showing one more time that he is a weak politician.
As a result of the procrastination, the decision was made by the Kremlin inhabitants. And Putin had to accept his new part in their game. Still, he seemed so insecure of the future that one cannot be sure that he will finally become Prime Minister.
But if he does, he will have to rule the country in much more critical circumstances than before. Nobody would envy a person who is to be Prime Minster during the crisis – the one who will be responsible for the agricultural sector in the times of the crop failure or tackle the food prices with inflation booming, or finally be responsible for social peace in the height of class struggle.
Can you think of a Farrow changing place with Josef when the “thin cows” have come? This Farrow might be into some trouble, I am afraid…
In addition to objective economic and social consequences, we will have to live with bureaucratic diarchy, guessing which of the two has more political clout. It is quite possible that Medvedev will still be at home with subordinate positions. But will Medvedev’s second Deputy Minister be subordinate to Putin’s Third Deputy, will the bureaucratic machine be efficient now that neither the law nor the internal administrative regulations say how it must function.
The magical transformation of the President into Prime Minister is potent with paralyzing the work of both the Presidential Administration and the Cabinet of Ministers. The informal right to rule the country from the Kremlin was legitimated by the nationally acclaimed bureaucratic tsar. Now that Putin gives away his practically royal powers, this scheme is no longer viable.
The President’s blunder will cost the whole political system stability. How will he act now? It would be a thrill to follow the developments. But 140 million Russians following the situation might be depressed to find the developments adversely affect their as it is miserable existence.
Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements
December 29, 2007
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