Vladimir Putin Up for a Vote Again
// Dmitry Medvedev uses United Russia technology
And it might work
Dmitry Medvedev's presidential campaign, which was effectively begun yesterday by United Russia, will bear a strong resemblance in both form and content to the party's parliamentary election campaign. Voters will not so much be asked to vote for the candidate as for keeping Vladimir Putin in power. That is a good turnout for Medvedev's victory in the first round.
Yesterday's meeting between Medvedev and the leaders of the United Russia, Just Russia, Agrarian and People's Front Parties, which intend to nominate him for president, began with Medvedev's statement that, if he should win in the presidential elections, he would offer Putin the post of prime minister. Just Russia leader Sergey Mironov announced that after the meeting. Thus Medvedev has played his main campaign trump already – the voters who are interested in having Putin continue his leadership, and in practice voted for that in the December 2 State Duma elections, have a reason to vote for the candidate who promises just that. That job offer raised the likelihood of Medvedev's victory in the first round of voting on March 2. It will be enough if everybody who voted for United Russia in the Duma elections votes for him.
United Russia representatives expressed concern about the presidential campaign several days before the nomination of Medvedev. At a meeting of the Center for Socially Conservative Policy, deputy secretary of the presidium of the party's general council Andrey Isaev warned that the presidential elections, following the parliamentary elections by only three months “may backfire.”
Isaev suggested that the public's tiredness would come to bear on the next elections, as might dissatisfaction with rising prices expected to continue into the new year. He thought it necessary to take preliminary measures, raising the minimum pension, for example, and raising the minimum wage to the minimum cost of living.
“The success of any candidate at the polls depends on whether or not is has an attractive offer for the electorate,” Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Politics told Kommersant. “Medvedev has that attractive offer.” Deputy director of the Center for Political Technology Boris Makarenko suggests that “social concerns, national projects, economic and political stability, interethnic harmony” and similar topics should be dominant in the successor's election campaign, and a “campaign in the positive” will be enough to guarantee Medvedev victory. “The positive alone is not enough,” countered Alexey Trubetskoi, president of Novokom Corp. “There should be a battle in the election battle,” he told Kommersant. He considers it possible that another group of voters will nominate one of the other potential successors. Then “we can have an American-style election,” he suggested, when two candidate promise to continue “Putin's course” in his own way.
The likelihood of another of the potential successors running for president is not high. First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was long counted among potential successors, expressed his full support for Medvedev yesterday. Influential regional leaders, ranging from Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, have also expressed support for Medvedev and hypothetical prime minister Vladimir Putin. The energetic approval of the regional and federal elite, which was just enjoyed by United Russia in the parliamentary elections, is evidence of the resources available to Medvedev. Now the question is who will lead his campaign. Mironov stated yesterday that he knows who will be the head of Medvedev's campaign staff, but he refused to name that person. He said that an agreement was reached during yesterday's meeting on close cooperation between the presidential staff and the Just Russia staff.
A source in the presidential executive staff said that the head of the campaign staff will most likely become head of the presidential executive staff after the election. So far head of the presidential executive staff Sergey Sobin and his deputy Vladislav Surkov are competing for that position. A source close to the Kremlin noted that the question of who heads the staff is not very important. He recalled that Medvedev was head of Putin's staff in 2000, but all the work was done by the presidential administration, which was then headed by Alexander Voloshin. But in 2004, Dmitry Kozak headed the staff, and the presidential administration was still pulling most of the weight, being headed by Medvedev.
Alla Barakhova, Suzanna Farizova, Maria-Luiza Tirmaste, Viktor Khamraev
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 12, 2007
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