Saturday, September 12, 2009

Putin Will Run Again In 2012


Dmitry Medvedev may have won the presidency in Russia's last elections, but few people think he is in actual charge of the Russian government. The real power rests where it did before the election -- with Vladimir Putin. He just wields that power from his prime minister's post in the parliament right now.

But it looks like Putin's getting tired of ruling Russia from behind-the-scene. Speaking to a gathering of foreign academics and journalists, Putin said he and Medvedev would "reach an agreement" about the next election.

Putin said, "Did we compete against each other in 2007?...No, we didn't. And so we won't in 2012 either. We'll reach an agreement. We're people of the same blood, with the same political views...When it comes to 2012, we'll work it out together, taking into account the current reality, our own plans, the shape of the political landscape, and the state of United Russia, the ruling party."

Those words are pretty easy to translate. They mean that Medvedev will do exactly what Putin tells him to do -- step down and let Putin run again. Now that he has sat out one term, Russian law will let Putin again serve two terms, and since the presidential term was recently extended to six years, that means Putin could be Russia's president until 2024 (and I wouldn't bet against the law being changed again in those 12 years to allow him to serve even longer).

Democracy didn't last very long in Russia, did it?

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