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President Putin one step closer to the fifth term

2023-12-07 20:45:09Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Putin one step closer to the fifth term
Vladimir Putin

Russian lawmakers today set the date for the 2024 presidential election on March 17, bringing Vladimir Putin one step closer to his fifth term.

Members of the Federation Council, the highest chamber of the Russian parliament, unanimously voted the decree to set the date.

"Basically, this decision marks the beginning of the electoral campaign," said Valentina Matviyenko, head of the Federation Council. The Central Election Commission is expected to hold a meeting on the election campaign on Friday.

Mr. Putin, now 71 years old, has not yet announced his intention to run again, but is expected to do so in the coming days.

According to the constitutional reforms made possible by him, he can have two more six-year mandates, after the end of the current mandate next year, thus having the possibility of staying in power until 2036.

Having established complete control over the Russian political system, Mr. Putin's victory in next year's elections is certain. Critics who might challenge him to run for office are in jail or asylum abroad, and most independent media outlets have been outlawed.

Neither the protracted and costly war in Ukraine nor the failed rebellion in the summer by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appear to have affected the level of public support in polls.

It is not yet clear who will challenge Mr. Putin in the election. Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny called on his supporters in an online statement on Thursday to vote for anyone but Putin.

"Putin sees this election as a referendum to approve his actions. A referendum on approving the war. Let's disrupt his plans and make it possible that on March 17 no one will be interested in the manipulated result, but that the whole of Russia will look at it and understand: The will of the majority is that Putin should leave," the statement said.

Two people have announced that they will run: former deputy Boris Nadezhdin, who is now a member of the Moscow region council, and Yekaterina Duntsova, a journalist and lawyer from the Tver region north of Moscow, a former member of the local legislature.

Allies of Igor Strelkov, a hard-line nationalist who has accused Mr Putin of weakness and indecisiveness on Ukraine, have mentioned his ambition to run, but charges of extremism by Russian authorities make it unlikely his candidacy.

Mr Strelkov, a former security services officer who led Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and has been convicted of murder in the Netherlands for his role in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that year, has criticized Mr. Putin as "non-existent" and a "mediocre coward". He was arrested in July and remains in prison. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison.

Registering as candidates for Mr. Nadezhdin and Ms. Duntsova may prove difficult. If their names are not proposed by one of the five political parties that have deputies in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, they will have to collect thousands of signatures in different regions.

Under Russian election law, candidates nominated by parties not represented in the lower house of the Russian parliament, known as the State Duma, or in at least one-third of regional legislatures, must submit at least 100,000 signatures from 40 or more many regions. People running independently without the support of any party need a minimum of 300,000 signatures from 40 or more regions.

These restrictions also apply to Mr. Putin, who has used different tactics over the years. He ran as an independent in 2018 and the signatures were collected by his campaign staff. In 2012, he ran as nominated by the United Russia party and did not need to collect signatures.

At least one party - the One Just Russia party, which has 27 deputies in the 450-member Duma - is ready to nominate Mr Putin as a candidate. Its leader, Sergei Mironov, an early lawmaker and staunch supporter of Mr. Putin, was reported by the Interfax news agency as saying on Thursday that his party made the decision months ago and would nominate Mr. Putin during the congress. hers on December 23, even if Mr. Putin decides to run as an independent.

It is not clear whether the Kremlin will agree to these plans. The press service of this party told the Associated Press news agency that the decision is the party's and the Kremlin did not comment on it.

Mr. Putin is more likely to run as an independent, independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin said. “It would be an excessive honor for a party; he considers himself much higher. Therefore, I think that he will run as an independent and that he will probably collect signatures. This will be a good pretext to promote the campaign in the regions".

Mr. Oreshkin, a professor at the Free University in Riga, Latvia, thinks that Mr. Putin and some other less popular candidates, such as the early leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov or Mr. Nadezhdin.

The Central Election Commission intends to organize electronic voting in about 30 regions of Russia in addition to traditional paper voting, and is considering extending the voting process to three days - a practice that was used during the pandemic and widely criticized by observers. independent elections.

These measures, along with restrictions on election observation imposed in recent years, will further limit the ability of independent observers, says Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chairman of the Golos group, an independent organization of election observers.

Mr. Andreychuk told the Associated Press news agency that only registered candidates, or the state-backed advisory entity Citizen Chambers, can appoint observers to polling stations, reducing the likelihood of truly independent observers. There is very little transparency about electronic voting, and if voting lasts for three days, it will be extremely difficult to monitor nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country — not to mention monitoring that votes are not stolen overnight, he said.

"Regular monitoring (in polling stations) is the biggest problem now," said Mr. Andreychuk.

"But we will work anyway," he said of the Golos organization, adding that they will monitor throughout the electoral campaign and support activists who will go to the polling stations on election days.

Analyst Oreshkin says that voting will be more "a ritual" than a competitive electoral process.

"This electoral ritual, this electoral rite has great meaning for Putin and his team. It is important as it measures the loyalty of regional elites and serves as an indicator of whether the system is working," he said.


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