▲ Russian President Vladimir Putin © Presidential Press
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Russian President Vladimir Putin crosses the middle of his six-year term in three months. In fact, the point in the middle of his six-year term doesn’t seem very meaningful to him. It is rather realistic to see that he has 15 years left instead of 3 years.
With the exception of acting as an acting authority, President Putin first took office as president on May 7, 2000. At the time, he was 48 years old. After two four-year terms, he temporarily withdrew from the post of prime minister in 2008 to avoid the provisions of the constitution’s “three consecutive terms ban”, but after serving as “Major Prime Minister” for four years, he returns to the presidential palace.
And waiting for him to return to the Kremlin after four years was a term of six years, two more years. This is because in 2008, when he served as prime minister, President Medvedev, who was his aide and then incumbent, changed the law and extended his term of office to six years from the next term.
And last year, through a constitutional amendment, Russia approved a special provision that allowed President Putin to remain blank until now, and to challenge him again. Eventually, in 2024, when he finished his six-year term in office, President Putin was able to run for president again, and when he retires, he will be 84 years old. It means almost half of his life as president.
And the likelihood is not low. President Putin’s vote in the 2018 election was 76.69%. The gap with the second place candidate Pavel Grudinin is a whopping 64.92 percentage points, higher than the number of votes of most elected candidates. The situation was similar in the previous 2012 elections. As such, it seems difficult to come up with an opposition leader strong enough to threaten President Putin in the future.
There are two main reasons why President Putin was able to hold such a long term in office, rarely as an elected head of state. There is a connection between the two, but there are also contradictions. Sooner or later, the clash of social phenomena arising from these two factors will put the Russian people at the forefront of a major choice.
Reasons for Putin’s long-term power ①-History and disposition
With the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991, Russia embraced a Western democracy, which it had never experienced, with no time to think. On the other hand, the sudden collapse of the eastern bloc led to a sense of victory in Western society, but was too clumsy to embrace them. It was the same in the West that I was not ready at all. In the end, Russia, who thought it would become a member of the European family, realized a sense of separation with them, and began to seek a new way to find Russia’s pride and glory.
Russia, a tyrannical monarchy that had been ruled by the Tsar in the past, had an exceptionally powerful one-man rule compared to any other Western European monarchy in history. The soviet that emerged following was also a totalitarianism in which one party fully took over the state, and in fact it was not very different from absolutism in this context.
Russia, who ended the 20th century in a sense of betrayal and anxiety about the future, without time to slowly absorb Western democracy, wanted a new national leader for a new millennium. The leader had to be a leader with the same power as the Tsar, and it was Vladimir Putin who appeared before the people at that time.
The leadership image the Russian people wanted at the time was also revealed in the reaction of the government to the government’s response to the hostage theater in Moscow in 2002. On October 23, 2002, 42 Chechen independenceists invaded Moscow’s opera house and held 850 audiences in hostage play.
In response, the Russian authorities immediately launched a thorough hard-line suppression operation. As a result, they killed all the hostages, but 133 hostages, three times more than that, were also killed at the scene. Contrary to the expectations of the international community, 83% of the Russian people at the time responded to this terrible outcome, saying they were satisfied with the Putin administration’s actions.
On the contrary, the reaction of the Russian people to the corruption and corruption of the power and wealthy is relatively generous. Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization headquartered in Germany, publishes a ranking every year along with the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by country. According to the 2020 data released this year, Russia is 129 out of 180 countries. Took the place.
American daily Reported on January 28, 2016 that the perception of corruption among Russians was different from that of Western society. It is difficult to dismiss that the report of a Russian journalist was a contributing article from an American point of view.
According to the report, the word’corruption’ itself is a foreign language that was not originally in Russian, and the Russians do not understand the Western way of thinking about corruption, and the equivalent of Western’corruption’ means friendship and intimacy for them. . Also, the Russians think that it is natural for money to catch up when power comes up.
In this way, individual sacrifices must be endured for the security and stability of the country, and being generous about’corruption’ following the governing actions of the power subject, this is the first factor in which the regime will not change no matter how much elections are held in Russia. .
Reason for Putin’s long-term power ②-The mysterious death
▲ Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalni, who was arrested shortly after returning home from Germany after poisoning treatment, is coming out of the Khimki police station outside Moscow, escorted by the police in handcuffs immediately after the court’s decision to arrest for 30 days on the 18th (local time). Ⓒ Alliance/EPA
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The second factor is partially related to the first factor, but unlike the first, it is not a simple issue of nationality, but a criminal factor is heavily involved.
In modern Russian political history, the sudden disappearance or death of influential opposition figures or journalists critical of the regime frequently occurred in a way that was difficult to understand. In terms of the victims, there are various occupations such as politicians, journalists, and public servants, but they have one thing in common. They are critics of President Putin and his policies.
Even if you just count on recent events, it’s hard to imagine unless it’s a movie. On February 27, 2015, former deputy prime minister Boris Nemchev, a leading opposition politician, was shot and killed on a bridge while heading home from work. In a planned murder by the elite agents, four out of six bullets hit his body.
And on August 20, last year, Alexey Navalni, who had been at the forefront of the anti-government struggle by claiming President Putin’s corruption and corruption, was attacked by poison inside an airplane and lost consciousness. With the efforts of the German human rights organization Cinema Peace Foundation, he was transferred to Germany to receive treatment and was only able to awaken from a coma on September 7th.
Sergei Yusenkov, a member of the Liberal Russian Party, who had previously criticized Putin’s oppression of Chechnya in 2003, was shot and killed near his home, and in 2006, former security agent Alexandre Litvinenko, who was critical of the regime, was in exile in Britain due to poisonous terrorism. There have been numerous cases of opposition and media crackdowns, such as the death of a reporter from Novaya Gazzetta, who investigated the human rights issue of the Russian military in the same year, was shot and killed in her apartment, but the people supported him for Putin. Is absolute.
Isn’t it unreasonable to expect opposition figures that could threaten President Putin in this situation? Currently, the ruling party of Russia is’Integrated Russia’. Aside from being a conservative right wing, it is a colorless and odorless party. It is a right-wing coalition that can be called a kind of big tent, and it occupies 336 of 450 seats in the state Duma (Russian National Assembly). Combined with the subsidized parties, the total number of seats supporting the Putin administration is 400. The first opposition party is the 42-seat Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In fact, it is Putin’s solo system.
By the way
▲ Russian citizens hold a protest in Moscow on the 23rd (local time) calling for the release of opposition activist Alexey Navalni. Ⓒ Alliance/EPA
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Something remarkable has recently happened in this reality in Russia. Navalni’s inflexible courage, who woke up dramatically from a coma, stimulated the people. Despite endless threats of murder and government oppression, Navalni headed for Russia immediately after being treated in Germany. Many held back home, but he did not avoid.
When the situation turned out like this, the Russian people also began to move. Upon returning to Russia, Navalni was arrested, and the people responded with protests for release and increased resistance to the government. After his arrest, Navalni revealed through pre-recorded video that President Putin owned an extravagant private palace on the Black Sea coast.
The video contained detailed information from the palace floor plan, photos, and detailed costs. The authenticity of the video has not been confirmed, but President Putin, who felt the seriousness of the situation, even tried to clarify that the palace was not his own.
Navalni is currently in custody, and even if released, he could be at greater risk. However, there are certain things that have changed from the past. It is that the people watch over the human rights issues of opposition personnel with greater interest.
There are other challenges for Russian politics to be solved. Alexey Navalni, who seems to be the patron god of Russian democracy, is actually a politician with potential controversy. His national and far-right political orientation is highly likely to cause another Russian political problem if he is in a responsible position.
However, real politics is not about realizing ideals. It is to solve the task at hand one by one. It seems that Russia is not the time to compete over the political line. To that point, it seems urgent to settle the principles of human rights and democracy.
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