Putin doing a high wire act to win the presidential election

There is a whole lot of political acrobatics going on in Russia and Mr. Putin is the solo performer. Some of his actions have annoyed his opponents. They are wondering whether democracy will ever flourish in their country. One wonders whether authoritarianism runs deep in Mr. Putin's psyche. The West is perturbed by what they see coming in Russia. Is democracy has room to flourish in post-1991 Russia?

Figuratively speaking, the temperature is rising in Russia as presidential election nears. On March 14, 2004, Russians will cast their vote to elect their next president. Although half a dozen or so opposition politicians ranging from staunch nationalist to ultra liberalist candidate will compete to get the attention of the voters, Mr. Vladimir Putin, the incumbent president is expected to receive about 80 percent of the vote making him the next president of Russia. Mr. Putin is trying to look presidential and not participating in a national debate. However, the rest of the candidates participated in a televised debate. Never mind the news that one of the opposition candidates, Mr. Ivan Rybkin, was untraceable for five long days. When Mr. Rybkin returned from the "forced hibernation," he had a bizarre story to tell. Supposedly, some folks lured him to Ukraine with the assurance that he would meet one of the Chechen leaders. This turned out to be a hoax anyway. Mr. Rybkin was drugged and abducted to Ukraine. Looks as if the Russian underworld has the gumption of delving into politics. Who says Russian politics could be boring and dull?

Here I will try to put together some snippets of pre-election activities that are now filling both online and print newspapers in the West. How is Mr. Putin campaigning these days? For some thoughts on this, let us review some recent breaking news.

Russia's top election official criticised on February 13, 2004, state television channels for giving too much coverage to Mr. Putin's campaign speech, while other candidates complained because they all thought the excessive air time had violated Russia's campaign rules. Rossiya and other television channels ran big chunks of Putin's speech throughout the day in their news programmes. This is the reason several Putin rivals cried foul. The opposition party candidates had asserted that broadcasting the president's speech violated the election law and their rights as candidates. As per Russia's election law, all presidential candidates should have received equal access to television and other media and the law specifies that candidates must pay for any airtime they receive in addition to limited free slots allocated to them. It looks as if the federal channels have gone out of the way to promote Mr. Putin's candidacy.

One of the startling developments that had emanated from Mr. Putin's speech is his declaration that the demise of the Soviet Union was a "national tragedy on an enormous scale." This assertion of Mr. Putin appears to be his strongest-ever lament of the collapse of the Soviet empire. It can be added here that Putin, who made his career as a former agent of the Soviet KGB spy agency, gave encomiums to the former Soviet Union for being a world superpower but now he laments publicly the demise of the old empire. The robustness of his lamentation in the political setting has surprised many political observers in the West. Mr. Putin stated, "The break up of the Soviet Union is a national tragedy on an enormous scale," from which "only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained." He further said, "I think that ordinary citizens of the former Soviet Union and the post-Soviet space gained nothing from this. On the contrary, people have faced a huge number of problems. Today we must look at the reality we live in. We cannot only look back and curse about this issue. We must look forward." Putin made this speech before 300 die-hard campaign workers gathered at Moscow State University. His language sent a chill through the 14 other former Soviet republics that are now independent countries for over a decade.

Mr. Putin in the past had to assure the former republics telling them that Russia had no desire to rebuild the old empire. Only months ago, when political problem surfaced in the neighbouring Georgia concerning the ouster of Mr. Eduard Shevardnadze, we noticed how Russia was acting like a big brother. When the new leader of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, was making rapprochement with the Bush Administration, we saw how Mr. Putin reacted to that overture. In the first week of February 2004, Mr. Saakashvili paid a visit to Moscow as he sought to mend fences with the powerful neighbour worried about Tbilisi's hobnobbing with Washington crowd. Who says "Big Brotherism" is not alive and well in Russia?

Many experts on Russian politics hold the view that Mr. Putin is expected to win the March 14 election in a landslide. Thus, a well-confident candidate Mr. Putin has refused to participate in television debates with the opposition party candidates or use the free television airtime. This bold move by Mr. Putin has reflected both his confidence of victory and the image he is cultivating amongst Russians as a strong leader who does not need conventional advertisements. Addressing the packed auditorium at Moscow State University, Putin quipped, "the head of state should not engage in self-advertising." "Nevertheless," he continued, "I am simply obliged before my voters and the entire country to account for what has been done during the past four years, and to tell people what I intend to do during the next four years" if elected.

As an incumbent, Mr. Putin is utilising the full usage of the state-run TV to get his message across. Therefore, Putin, like his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, has not been shy of using state resources in political campaigning. This has become a Russian style. Mr. Mikhail Krasnov, an analyst for INDEM think-tank said to a Reuters reporter: "Unfortunately, this has become a tradition in this country. Yeltsin did this and Putin is doing the same. Russia is a highly hierarchical society and maintaining an image of the boss includes the demonstration of ability to do what others cannot afford." The West is intently watching all the developments in Russia vis-à-vis the election campaign. They think that Mr. Putin ought not to use his increasing grip on power to take Russia back to its autocratic past.

It is very unfortunate that Russia's two main liberal parties, the most vocal advocates of reform, were all but wiped out in the November election. Mr. Putin knows that this is not good for democracy in Russia; he said he regretted their poor showing and pledged to make use of their most prominent members. As a gesture of goodwill, the pro-Kremlin bloc in parliament nominated two prominent liberal politicians to senior state posts on February 13. Mr. Vladimir Lukin, a former ambassador to Washington, was named human rights commissioner and Ms. Yelena Mizulna was appointed the parliament's member in the Constitutional Court.

Mr. Putin knew that he was being watched up close. Thus, he met German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who told him of European concerns over Russia's record in observing freedom of speech, political transparency and pluralism. It is noteworthy that in January 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell made similar remarks in a newspaper interview.

There is some resentment among opposition politicians in Russia. Some of them had considered boycotting the presidential election, saying a fair vote was not possible in Russia today, and Mr. Putin's refusal to debate on February 12, 2004, reflected the candidates' anger at Mr. Putin's dominance of the campaign. Most ordinary Russians do not expect to see their president participating in the debate. Someone quipped that the head of state in Russia is like the czar who should not participate in discussions with those below him in the hierarchy. In the meantime, the Organisation for the Security and Cooperation (OSC) in Europe said the state-controlled media's parliamentary campaign coverage was slanted toward pro-Putin forces and accused the government of pressuring news media, to limit opposition views. This is not an outrageous comment because we have seen how Mr. Putin has dealt with two billionaire oligarchs who expressed their intention to help the president's opponents in the forthcoming election.

Mr. Putin was however nonchalant; he launched his bid for re-election on February 12, saying he had ended "the time of uncertainty" in Russia and promising a better life for millions yet to benefit from post-Soviet change. He pledged to speed up reforms in his second four-year Kremlin term and lay the basis for a society with Western-style social institutions. Nonetheless, the one-sidedness of the campaign thus far had prompted fears among Russian liberals and in the West that democracy could be under threat in Russia.

Dr AH Jaffor Ullah is a researcher.