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Putin the maverick

GIVE Vladimir Putin credit where it is due: that is, for his firmness to stand by the Russian Constitution, and seek ways other than trampling it, to continue with his hold on power.

Hence his move to step aside from the presidential chair, as required by the Constitution after two terms in office, next year, and get elected to lead the Duma and be the next prime minister —a part of the grand design also being to install what might be a puppet as president until 2012, when Constitution will allow Putin to be President again.

Here’s a head of state, at the height of his popularity, rejecting temptations of flouting the rules to carry on in office. Putin, if anything, is crafty. He would rather have two conditions met, in order to continue holding power in a new capacity as prime minister: namely, his party, the United Russia, must win the election in an “honest fight”, and a decent man is elected in his place as president.

That might be how he seeks to adorn himself with respectability; this, for a man often scoffed at by the elite in the west and elsewhere either for his failures to meet up to the democratic standards in governance, or for his brutal suppression of the rights, say, of the Chechens.

Putin is a rare specimen in politics. If his popularity is now at around 80 per cent, as is touted, the Russian president has come a long way from the image of him being a ‘shy spy’. Note the contrast with his US counterpart whose popularity is nose-diving, or those like Tony Blair who struggled hard to fend off public hostility in his final leg in office; or a Jaques Chirac, who ducked public disenchantment.

Putin is not known for his PR skills in domestic circles or in the international circuit. He, rather, has a meek exterior and a tough interior. He means business; and, the black belt that he is, he knows how to tackle his opponents: just as he turned the tables on oil giants who developed political ambitions, or on President Bush at the G-8 in Germany over the US plans to set up a Europe-based missile defence shield.

It now is Putin’s Russia; a Russia that is resurgent militarily, and buoyant in the economic sense. Which, in sum, is why Russians want Putin as their leader. In a sense, that has many of us worrying, too, as to what fate awaits the rebels and the opposition in the years ahead. With growing popularity, Putin is seen to be increasingly becoming dictatorial. His decision to do away with the election of provincial heads is a case in point. Nor are the Chechens breathing fresh air. Their sense of suffocation is worsening under the Putin dispensation. Hope now is as simple as this: if Russians do not (want a) change (at the helm), Putin on his own should change (his harsh ways).