This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Dimitri Medvedev has been elected to succeed incoming Prime Minister power behind the throne Vladimir Putin:
MOSCOW, March 2 — After 24 hours of voting across 11 time-zones, Russians handed Dmitry Medvedev an overwhelming victory in the presidential election Sunday despite a lackluster campaign that was more coronation than contest from the moment last December when President Vladimir Putin endorsed him.
Medvedev won 70.1 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll, nearly matching Putin’s tally in 2004 and infusing his victory with the kind of numbers he will claim as a genuine mandate. As expected, he crushed the anemic challenges of three opponents who never got to debate him and were drowned out by a deafening media drumbeat that Medvedev was “Putin’s choice” and his victory would ensure the continuation of the popular president’s policies.
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The Central Elections Commission reported an hour before polls closed that nearly 65 percent of Russia’s 109 million voters had cast ballots at 96,000 polling stations.
Medvedev was trailed by Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, with 16.8 percent; ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, with 11.4 percent; and Andrei Bogdanov, an ostensible liberal, who had 1.7 percent, according to an exit poll by state-owned pollster VTsIOM for Russia’s First Channel TV.
The agency’s predictions in December’s parliamentary elections proved highly accurate, and a second poll closely tracked those numbers. Official results are expected Monday.
Come on, does anyone really think the “official” results are in doubt ?
The only thing that’s really in doubt at this point is how much of a lap dog Medvedev will be:
[A]lthough the results were never in doubt, Mr. Medvedev’s future role very much is, given that the man who anointed him, President Vladimir V. Putin, intends to remain in the government.
Mr. Medvedev, an unassuming aide to Mr. Putin who has never before held elected office, portrayed himself during a relatively listless campaign as something of a reformer, vowing to crack down on endemic corruption and promote the rule of law. He also seemed to take a less strident stance toward the West than Mr. Putin. Mr. Medvedev’s success at adopting this platform early in his tenure will represent an important indicator of whether Mr. Putin will allow him to be more than a figurehead.
Mr. Putin has pledged to serve as Mr. Medvedev’s prime minister, and he has already suggested that he will broaden the responsibilities of a position that since the Soviet Union’s fall has typically been administrative. Mr. Medvedev will most certainly assent to this at first, although the question is whether he will chafe at it over time.
Dating back to the czars, Russia has never had such a joint leadership structure, and both men are undoubtedly aware that tensions between them could destabilize the nation. Still, even if they work well together, as they have promised, the very fact that there will be two centers of power could stoke conflicts in a Kremlin that even under Mr. Putin has often been the scene of internecine feuding.
In any power struggle between an inexperienced Medvedev and Putin, I’d put my money on Vlad, and that, I think is exactly what Dimitri was chosen:
Andrei A. Piontkovsky, a prominent political commentator and Putin critic, said it was clear that Mr. Putin chose Mr. Medvedev for his loyalty and little else.
“Mr. Medvedev was his subordinate for the last 20 years — he is chemically conditioned to obey Mr. Putin,” Mr. Piontkovsky said. “This artificial construction of two czars creates a real factor of instability. But Putin is a clever guy, he chooses the person with minimal potential damage for him. It’s also a classic good cop, bad cop structure, with Mr. Medvedev playing the ceremonial good cop role for the West and the Russian intelligentsia.”
And democracy dies another death in Russia.
