Russia, The Moscow Times: la debolezza di Putin
La forza di un leader democratico sta nella sua capacità di stare all'opposizione.

In vista delle elezioni presidenziali del 2004 Putin sta facendo tabula rasa di ogni possibile opposizione.
Secondo l'autore dell'articolo, già membro dell'Istituto degli Studi Europei dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Mosca, il fatto che le iniziative del capo del Cremlino non incontrino apparente resistenza non è un segno di forza ma di debolezza.
Solo i leader che sono in grado di passare all'opposizione sono veramente forti e, soprattutto, liberi.
Non è il caso di Putin: il presidente russo -afferma l'accademico- è sotto la tutela dell'esercito: "immaginate cosa accadrebbe se il successore di Putin dovesse aprire un'inchiesta sulla guerra in Cecenia":
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Thursday, October 30, 2003

Presidential Weakness

By Dmitry Furman

On the face of it, the Russian president appears to wield far more power than most. When Boris Yeltsin was putting together the current Constitution, he reserved all possible powers for himself. And these powers then passed to his hand-picked successor.

President Vladimir Putin would seem to be in an even stronger position that his predecessor. He is more popular. The opposition is weaker. He has taken care of the most dangerous media outlets and the least loyal oligarchs. The Federation Council is in his pocket. He has stripped governors of their legal immunity. He has just about finished building the vertikal vlasti, the strict executive chain of command. And he is putting the finishing touches on a parliamentary majority party whose platform consists of one point: loyalty to the president. It's hard to imagine what more he could do.

And yet more and more you get the impression that the president is actually weak.

Take the border dispute with Ukraine that erupted last week over a Russian dam being built in the Kerch Strait. Personally, I am inclined to believe Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov when he says that the dam was his idea, and that his reasons for building it really are no more sophisticated than the list of "economic and ecological" concerns he reels off to the press. There may be a complex subplot in all this, but one thing is clear: A major foreign policy decision, which nearly brought Russia to the brink of war with a neighboring country, was made not by the president but by a provincial governor. This kind of thing wouldn't happen in the most democratic of federal countries. What's more, Tkachyov obviously isn't worried. And Vladimir Putin is staying mum.

Then came the Khodorkovsky affair. The Prosecutor General's Office detained him after all. Everyone demanded that Putin take a stand, but at first he kept silent like a chekist under interrogation by the Gestapo. Then he came out with a slew of generalities along the lines of "Everyone is equal before the law."

This is not how a leader behaves when he possesses real power.

Putin's actions in the last week cannot be explained away as confusion or the result of his conflicting ambitions. His behavior reveals weakness, pure and simple. But is this the weakness of Putin the man, or the weakness of presidential authority in Russia?

Putin's personality is clearly a factor. When Yeltsin was choosing his successor, it seems to me that above all he was looking for someone who would not become too independent. Maybe he looked a little too hard. But the weakness revealed in the past week is also institutional and systemic.

The strength of democratic leaders derives from their ability to go into opposition. When a politician knows that the worst that can happen to him isn't all that bad, he becomes independent.

The true authoritarian ruler, the military dictator, is dependent on the power that props him up: the army. He has no choice but to indulge it. And if his army is loyal, the dictator can run the country as he sees fit.

Neither model pertains to Russia. Our leaders cannot go into opposition. Just imagine the catastrophe that would result from an investigation into the events that led to the two Chechen wars. Putin's first term is rich in such events, no less so than Yeltsin's presidency. In addition, our leaders cannot rely on a single source of physical force. Unable to free themselves from democratic and legal norms, they have to be elected. Yeltsin secured loyalty by handing out state property. Putin does not have this luxury, and this has made him an extremely cautious leader who depends excessively on his supporters and servants.

The uncontrollable billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky obviously presents a real danger, but there is no quick way to get rid of him. Everything has to be done "by the book" and at a safe remove from the Kremlin. But in this case, the leadership becomes dependent on the people it hires to do its dirty work. The ability to destroy Khodorkovsky and the inability to punish anyone for disasters on the scale of the Dubrovka tragedy are two sides of the same coin.

The elections have to be carefully orchestrated, of course, and no one does this as well as regional and local leaders. This means that Tkachyov, who controls a huge regional electorate, can do whatever he pleases without fear of reprisals.

Leaders who can walk away from power are free. Leaders who cannot walk away, but who are backed by some kind of military or police force, are dependent on the suppliers of this force. Leaders who cannot walk away, and who are not backed by force, are dependent on absolutely everyone. That's why setting up the Russian president is as easy as taking candy from a baby.


Dmitry Furman is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe under the Russian Academy of Sciences. This comment first appeared in Moskovskiye Novosti.

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fonte www.fondazionedivittorio.it