Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Temptation of Vladimir Putin

The Temptation of Vladimir Putin
Created: 03.11.2006 16:26 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:26 MSK
Deliya Melyanova
MosNews
Mark Antony:
... You all did see that at the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? ...
Julius Caesar Act 3 Scene II
I am grateful to the citizens who think that I can stay on and lead the 
country after my second term. But such a decision would undermine my 
inner certainty about what I was doing
Vladimir Putin, conversation with journalists in a Shanghai hotel, 
Saturday June 17 2006 (Komsomolskaya Pravda daily newspaper).
“Despite the fact that I like my job, the constitution doesn’t allow me 
to run a third time in a row,”
Vladimir Putin, during a nationally televised question-and-answer 
session October 25 2006.
The 2008 question increasingly being put to Vladimir Putin is important 
not only for because it will decide who will lead Russia until 2012, but 
also because of its symbolic significance. Will the constitution be changed?
This is a moment perhaps comparable to the time in 1993, when Boris 
Yeltsin forcibly dissolved the parliament and changed the constitution 
to give more powers to the president. Will Putin run for his third term 
as president, setting aside the constitution in favour of stability? So 
far he has refused, mildly deprecating, chiding the overeager reporters 
and citizens for their lack of respect for the constitution.
But how much are such refusals worth? Do they really mean what they say?
It seems to me they only bring the third term closer. If Vladimir Putin 
is so dutiful and anxious  surely that implies that he is the very 
person to continue to bear the Presidents burden, the only man Russians 
can trust. He is turning into a kind of Platonic philosopher-king, or a 
Kipling-style white man, reluctantly forced to rule, caring, 
responsible, self-sacrificing. The Russian media embrace him as a 
celebrity and a symbol, but with a substratum of respect and even 
veneration. Exactly because he refuses it, he is the man to be trusted 
with any amount of power.
What with the insistent demands and commentary in the media, there is a 
feeling, unspoken for now, that a third term is inevitable. The only 
other option is a successor, undisguisedly chosen by the current 
president. Either way, in 2008 Russia will take another significant step 
away from democracy: it has effectively taken it already.
Some analysts say that the main driving force is coming from within 
Putins supporters and henchmen who wish to maintain the status quo. But 
polls show that as many as 60% of ordinary Russians also want Putin to 
remain president.
What is that support founded on? Firstly, it is admittedly clear that 
Russians are happy with what Putin has done. Living standards have at 
least stabilised. Russian foreign policy has become more assertive. The 
war in Chechnya has been officially concluded. But it is also true that 
the media has come under such control that Putins image is not subject 
to any disturbing impacts.
Psychologically speaking too, the reasons are profound, and resonate 
with practical considerations. Russian voters are politically immature, 
and have a strong predisposition to hope for a morally pure president to 
be their saviour. Most politicians are reviled of course, but there is 
always the chance of one miraculously different one. People therefore 
collude with the image of the philosopher-king with an astonishing 
readiness.
One gets the impression in Russia of a country anxious to stop itself 
falling apart. There is a feeling that it is on the edge of chaos, held 
together only by the strength of the central government. Russians are 
therefore afraid of self-determination and, as it were, a multivocal 
society, afraid of freedom, associating it with weakness and disintegration.
Restriction of freedom is of course the basis of all societies, but in 
Russia one senses an inordinate paranoia. It has an irrational quality: 
therefore it is allayed most effectively by symbolic increases of 
control. Such is the function of the administrations catchphrase, the 
vertical of power  a sort of symbolic backbone to the otherwise 
disintegrating and disconnected state  and particular restrictions of 
civil and political rights.
Such may be the function of the Presidents third term. One could regard 
it as a fatal, symbolic overstepping of the law, a license for arbitrary 
rule. Yet in Russia such protests are made by a tiny minority, and sound 
like empty words. On the contrary, a third term seems to provide the 
security that Russians desperately need.
How far Putin could or would in reality guarantee stability and safety 
is another matter.
[si parla della censura sulla strage israeliana di Beit Hanoun sul blog di
tonibaruch]
[sergio]: da perfetto goebbelsuccio quale sei, meglio non parlarne cosi'
nessuno la ricorderà
[Tonibaruch] :  Vero
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 amalric, sei cosi' fesso che nemmeno capisci le lezioni di whiplash.
-- 
Qultura politica di Tonibaruch su It.Politica.Internazionale :
"Oltre al cumswapping e al cumdodging, fai anche il creampie, 
porno-razzi-catto-somarello?" 
http://groups.google.it/group/it.politica.internazionale/msg/1db9ef6abb0f7604?dmode=source&hl=it
