Anointed by the Kremlin boss
FEW COMPONENTS of liberal democracy are more indispensable than the right of the citizens to choose new leaders. Something very different was on view yesterday in a televised charade staged by Vladimir Putin. The Russian president made a show of accepting a recommendation by four compliant political parties to back his protege, Dmitri Medvedev, in presidential elections next March. The Kremlin boss was demonstrating that the highly centralized power system he has built lacks the marrow of a genuine democracy.
Among Putin's likely successors, Medvedev may be the most pragmatic. He is also the only one unaffiliated with an old-boy network of KGB veterans atop government agencies and government-owned energy conglomerates. His public statements and past deeds point toward a belief in free markets, a desire to tackle the corruption that infects Russian officialdom at nearly all levels, and an interest in improving the living conditions of Russians at the bottom of the economic ladder.
But even if Medvedev is the best choice among Putin's possible successors, there is nothing to celebrate in the way he was chosen or in the apparent reasons for that choice.
Medvedev has been Putin's companion and collaborator since their days together in the St. Petersburg mayor's office circa 1990. Putin is anointing Medvedev as his dauphin not just because he trusts him, but also because this faithful protege gives Putin his best chance of preserving his own influence and maintaining the power balance among different Kremlin factions.
Kremlin-controlled TV has created a czar-like aura around Putin, burnishing Medvedev's reputation as dispenser to the common people of Russia's energy windfall. So there is little doubt that Russian voters will dutifully do Putin's will next March and confirm his choice of a successor.
As chairman of the energy giant Gazprom as well as first deputy prime minister, Medvedev incarnates one of the worst aspects of the corporatist state Putin has built. Yet this will hardly stand in the way of his ascension to Putin's perch.
On the contrary, Medvedev will benefit from the Kremlin's deft cultivation of public assent to Putin's conception of what Russia most needs: a strong state. The image Putin has molded of a leader who concentrates all power in his own hands, purging disloyal media moguls and energy barons while standing up to meddlesome Western countries, has fostered an idolatry of the state and its master. In this political climate, a vote against the master's chosen successor becomes an act of disloyalty to the state that has made Russia rich and powerful.
If Putin has anything to worry about, it is that Medvedev will now have all the power accrued to the boss of Kremlin bosses. Czars and godfathers don't share power willingly. 