An
optimistic view eastwards by our friend Eric Walberg. Russians do not think that
the high theatre called "elections" is worth the trouble. I am not sure this is
correct attitude: if the Russian people were given a choice between,
say, Ivanov and Medvedev, at least, it would be more fun. We (and I mean
everybody I know) have no clue of Mr Medvedev's agenda. I do not believe Mr
Putin will continue as a Prime Minister, either. So the near future of Russia is
not really as clear as Eric seems to think.
The
cakes are not for eating
The elections of new
presidents in Serbia and Russia are giving the West a bad case of indigestion,
diagnoses Eric Walberg
The post-Soviet New World
Order project is continuing to suffer setbacks, with two new old thorns —
Serbian Democratic Party’s Boris Tadic on 3 February, who was narrowly
re-elected, beating the Radical Party’s Tomislav Nikolic, and Dmitri Medvedev,
the United Russia candidate, who leads his opponents in the presidential
election scheduled for 2 March with a healthy 75 per cent popularity
rating.
It could be far worse in
Serbia, as Tadic, though opposed to Kosovan independence, is the best of a bad
lot, being a big fan of the European Union. A victory for Nikolic, deputy prime
minister under the socialist Slobodan Milosevic, would have seen a Russian
military base on Kosovo’s border and Serbia rejecting all ties with the EU.
Tadic, who was instrumental
in overthrowing Milosevic, wants both to keep Kosovo and to join the EU, a clear
case of wanting to have his cake and eat it. Kosovan nationalists will probably
have already declared independence by the time you read this, setting off an
interminable, anguished campaign by Serbs and Russians to scuttle this totally
illegal move (what right do the US/EU have to give away another country’s
territory?). Serbs clearly hope he will be able to square the circle, but —
sorry — he can’t, and we can only hope that Nikolic and Russia will be able to
give him some backbone. The current prime minister and fellow “Democrat”,
Vojislav Kostunica, refused to endorse Tadic in this photo-finish election, an
ominous sign in light of the dilemma the latter now faces, since the EU has
already indicated it will immediately recognise a Republic of Kosovo when it is
declared.
Meanwhile, Russia is about
to elect a successor to President Vladimir Putin. Barring a nuclear war or a
repeat of 1917, the likely winner is Dmitri Medvedev, currently first deputy
prime minister. A retiring, bookish lawyer, he was Putin’s chief of staff, has
been chairman of the board of Gazprom since 2000 and currently oversees Russia’s
national infrastructure programmes.
In a slightly odd game of
musical chairs, he has promised to appoint President Putin as his prime
minister, much to the frustration of the Western powers. Reuters warned in horror that the
Putin-Medvedev duo could run Russia until 2033. Sergei Mironov, a Kremlin
loyalist and the speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house, said Putin
could become president again after a Medvedev term, serve two (maybe by then
seven-year) terms himself, and then hand over power once more to Medvedev. A
most unlikely scenario, but one which delights sensationalist Western media
pundits.
An earlier prime minister
under Putin, Mikhail Kasyanov, and world chess champion Gary Kasparov, touted by
the Western media as the real alternatives to Putin, failed to make the ballot,
and have loudly proclaimed to anyone who will listen that Putin has used
thuggery and all kinds of nasty tricks to make sure they can’t save Russia from
dictatorship. Kasyanov accused Putin of strangling democracy and said his
campaign was the victim of “an orgy of lawlessness” by authorities. He claimed
his activists were intimidated into signing false confessions that their
signatures were faked. In fact, both Western darlings are widely disliked in
Russia, and it is highly unlikely that state-funded orgies were necessary to
make sure either campaign floundered.
Medvedev’s closest rival is
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov with 13 per cent of the popular vote,
followed by quasi-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 12 per cent, and Democratic
Party leader Andrei Bogdanov, with less than one per cent. They are dismissed by
the New York Times as “window
dressing” though Zyuganov probably beat Yeltsin in 1996, but was prevented from
taking office in one of the many “cliff hanger” elections where the
socialist/liberal always seems to lose by a whisker (viz Al Gore in 2000 and
Mexican socialist Lopez Obrador in 2006). One can only marvel at the Western
media’s gross misrepresentation of the facts, and the Russians’ equanimity in
the face of their hysteria. Oh yes, the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has threatened to boycott the elections once again,
presumably in an attempt to spice up this tired leftover
dish.
The transition to a Medvedev presidency should be smooth,
with his focus on fighting corruption and environmental problems. “Russia is a
country of legal nihilism. Corruption in the official structures has a huge
scale and the fight against it should become a national programme,” said
Medvedev. The government is drafting a strategy for social and economic
development up to 2020 to rebuild Russia’s infrastructure and improve water
quality and waste recycling. He also said Russia has no need to apologise for
its ties to what he called “problem countries”, clearly a reference to Iran. He
said dealing with such nations is part of Russia’s international
responsibilities.
“We need decades of stable
development that our country has been deprived of,” a clear jab at Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev (who recently sharply criticised Putin) and the late
Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who is now seen as having destroyed a mighty
world power and handed Russia’s riches over to a tiny pro-Western
elite.
Yes, the West managed to
grind up both Russia and Serbia in the 1990s, and tried to cook tasty morsels
from their remains, but once these treats cooled, it found it was unable to
feast on them. They both got caught in its craw.
***