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Opinion
November 24, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
Why Russia’s elections may derail Putin’s biggest critic
Yigal Chazan and Nicolae Reutoi of Alaco
With Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin almost certain to run in the upcoming presidential ballot and secure another term in office, attention has focused on an intriguing subplot to the election story: the candidacy of television celebrity
Xenia Sobchak. As the first non-Kremlin puppet to take part in an election for 20 years, she could deal a blow to the political aspirations of leading Putin critic and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.
Sobchak threw her hat into the ring last month, with some suspicious that the move had been hatched by the Kremlin to split the opposition
and present the ballot as a competitive vote. Sob- chak, whose father, former St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, was Putin’s political mentor, has dismissed the speculation. She acknowledges that she has no chance of winning the election – describing it as a “high-budget show” – but insists that she is mounting a genuine campaign, dub- bing herself the “protest candidate”.
Several factors suggest she is her own woman: her oppositional pedigree and criticism of
the government’s record – in particular the intervention in Ukraine, and the absence of free elections – and the Kremlin’s apparent attempts to discredit her.
Before she announced that she intended to stand, sources close to the presidential administration sought to cast her as a puppet. They whispered
to the media that a female candidate was being
Xenia Sobchak, photographed at a demonstration.
sought to challenge Putin in the elections. Later other sources suggested that this person might be Sobchak, then the President’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke positively about her possible candidacy. It all suggests that Putin’s inner circle wanted to place her in an uncomfortable position, and sow the seeds of doubt about her intentions in Russian and Western media.
As she attempts to reassure voters, Navalny has troubles of his own. A trumped up embezzlement conviction prevents him from standing, but he will campaign with typical determination nonetheless. Navalny has his eyes not on these elections but the next ones in 2024. There is a great deal of uncertainty about what will happen then. Putin will be required by the constitution to step down, though it is unclear whether the contest to succeed him will be any less compromised than the one in March. Navalny will hope that he will at least be permitted to run. His immediate concern is that a confident, assertive Sobchak could further marginalise him in the interim.
Navalny has long been a thorn in Putin’s side.
He has dismissed the ruling elite as “crooks
and scoundrels” to the delight of his youthful supporters, who believe their future is being undermined by a corrupt leadership determined to thwart political and economic reform. Putin has employed bureaucratic and judicial ruses to break Navalny, but Russia’s very own ‘angry young man’ has remained a political player by circumventing the Kremlin’s monopoly on information.