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| 'Victory is ours': Some 10,000 supporters of Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group, rallied near Red Square Monday. Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters |
United Russia wins, Putin sees 'moral mandate' in vote
His United Russia party secured a two-thirds majority in parliament, eliminating virtually all opposition to Kremlin policies.
By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the December 4, 2007 edition
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Moscow - Vladimir Putin appears well on his way to reinventing himself as Russia's parliamentary leader when he leaves the Kremlin early next year, after his United Russia (UR) party won a massive two-thirds majority in Sunday's elections for the State Duma.
All eyes now turn to the presidential polls, slated for March 2, which in all likelihood will be won by Mr. Putin's nominee, who has yet to be announced.
UR and the three other parties that hurdled the 7 percent barrier to gain entry to the 450-seat Duma have until Dec. 23 to put forward their presidential candidates. But whoever sits next in the Kremlin will have to reckon with Putin, who made clear in the run-up to Sunday's elections that a good showing for UR would give him a "moral mandate" to maintain his personal influence over Russia's political direction.
"The vote affirmed the main idea: that Vladimir Putin is a national leader, that the people support his course, and this course will continue," said UR's leader, Boris Gryzlov, on Monday.
But some experts worry that Putin's efforts to shift his personal power base from the Kremlin to parliament could undermine Russia's fragile political institutions, which have no established division of authority.
"The big remaining question is how Putin will translate this electoral result into a position of continued power," says Masha Lipman, an expert with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "There are no relevant institutions left in Russia. The only safeguard of stability is Putin himself, and there is a lot of ambiguity about how he plans to manage this transition," she says.
Most experts speculate that Putin will use his position as leader of UR to become prime minister, speaker of parliament, or chief of the Kremlin Security Council, a presidential advisory body. UR's two-thirds parliamentary majority will enable it to initiate constitutional amendments formalizing Putin's new role.
"The elections were played out as a referendum on public trust in Putin," says Dmitri Badovsky, a political scientist at Moscow State University. He says Putin's plans will probably become clear at UR's convention two weeks from now. "If Putin becomes the leader of UR, at least he will be able to block any decisions he doesn't like. The constitutional majority of UR will be very powerful," he says.
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