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Valdimir Putin won the elections by a landslide, and it would be good for the West to take it, finally, seriously. But the mandate that is inaugurated risks being one of decadence for him
I wonder if Vladimir Putin sulked about this 75% of the votes collected in the election that sent him to the Kremlin for the fourth time. After all, it is a figure much lower than the approval rating, according to the authoritative and reliable Levada Center, accompanied him throughout 2017, well above 80%. Jokes aside, now we will hear the usual litany: but there was no Navalnyj, but the turnout, but the frauds… There will be some truth but nothing substantial. Because we should also prepare ourselves to swallow the fact that many Russians like Putin. So many that Putin would be elected president even if he didn't enjoy a media monopoly, even if the factory managers did not incite the workers to go and vote, even if he had real politicians as his opponents and not scraps (including the absent Navalnyj) of this round, even if he didn't have so much power that the very idea of an election campaign would be considered humiliating.
It seems strange to us but it can happen. For example if become prime minister in 1999, that is, a few months after your country declared itself insolvent and suffered the pillory of default and in 2017 you can declare that you have paid off all the debts of the USSR. If you become president for the first time when the GDP per capita of Russians is 1.300 dollars and you come back as president for the fourth time when the same GDP is almost at 12 mila. If in 2015, between Ukraine, sanctions and collapse of oil prices, the experts predict that everything will fall apart at your place and instead it doesn't happen. And so on.
This very obvious re-election is Putin's apotheosis. His triumph. Nevertheless, right now, the Turkish proverb that Thomas Mann had one of his Buddenbrooks quote comes to mind: “When the house is finished, death comes”. For goodness sake, Putin is in excellent health and has only 65 years. But the fourth presidency risks being, for him and for the Russia he represents, the most difficult of all.
CONTINUE ON LAWS
It seems strange to us but it can happen. For example if become prime minister in 1999, that is, a few months after your country declared itself insolvent and suffered the pillory of default and in 2017 you can declare that you have paid off all the debts of the USSR. If you become president for the first time when the GDP per capita of Russians is 1.300 dollars and you come back as president for the fourth time when the same GDP is almost at 12 mila. If in 2015, between Ukraine, sanctions and collapse of oil prices, the experts predict that everything will fall apart at your place and instead it doesn't happen. And so on.
This very obvious re-election is Putin's apotheosis. His triumph. Nevertheless, right now, the Turkish proverb that Thomas Mann had one of his Buddenbrooks quote comes to mind: “When the house is finished, death comes”. For goodness sake, Putin is in excellent health and has only 65 years. But the fourth presidency risks being, for him and for the Russia he represents, the most difficult of all.
CONTINUE ON LAWS
