Putin set to reclaim Kremlin amid protests

Russia votes in presidential polls on March 4 expected to deliver Vladimir Putin back to the Kremlin but which the opposition has warned will be followed by new protests against his 12 year domination.

The opposition has said it will scrutinise the elections for any signs of the ballot fraud which it says tarnished December 4 parliamentary polls and sparked mass rallies that smashed a taboo against anti-Putin protests.

The main suspense of the results will be whether Putin can win over 50 percent and avoid a second round, against four rivals who have kept a distance from the protest movement and may struggle to reach double figures.

But the protests have rattled the authorities and created tensions so far unseen in Putin’s Russia, with his supporters replying with mass demonstrations of their own as each side seeks to outdo the other.

“What is new in this campaign in the revolutionary element — we have not seen this since 1991” when the USSR collapsed, Vyacheslav Nikonov of the Moscow-based Fond Politika think tank told AFP.

“Many people are not going to acknowledge Putin’s victory in the elections and there are going to be protests on March 4 and 5. As for what happens next, when processes of destabilisation start no-one can predict the outcome.”

Putin has sought to keep a lofty distance from the campaign, as his rivals exchanged insults in televised debates and engaged in sometimes bizarre antics ranging from whipping a donkey to performing press-ups while juggling.

He emerged from government business only last week to give a brief but incandescent speech to over 100,000 people at a Moscow stadium whom he told that Russians had “victory” written into their genetic code.

“The battle for Russia continues, victory will be ours!” said Putin.

Putin, a former KGB officer, first became president in 2000 after the chaotic era of Boris Yeltsin and served two terms to 2008 in a period where he restored stability and confidence to the country but also restricted liberties.

He handed over the Kremlin to his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev in 2008 and became prime minister. But few ever doubted who was the true number one as Medvedev struggled to make headway with a modernisation programme.

The pair announced in September that Putin would stand for the presidency with Medvedev taking over as prime minister, in a scheme clumsily cooked up behind closed doors which many suspect fuelled the opposition protests.

With the presidential mandate now lengthened to six years, Putin could theoretically stay in power until 2024, a prospect that has prompted whispers he could become a new Leonid Brezhnev, the leader who presided over the “stagnation” of the USSR in the 1970s.

According to polls by the independent Levada Centre and the state-run VTsIOM, Putin should win outright in the first round with his nearest rival, the dour Communist Gennady Zyuganov, picking up no more than 15 percent of the vote.

He is set to be trailed by the maverick ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the talkative head of the A Just Russia party Sergei Mironov, both of whom Putin easily vanquished in previous elections.

However a new protagonist is tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $12 billion and who injected fresh ideas into the campaign despite lingering suspicions his candidacy is a Kremlin stitch-up.

Veteran liberal Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of the Yabloko (Apple) party, was ejected from the race owing to flaws with the signatures in the petition for his candidacy in a move the opposition denounced as politically motivated.

“Putin has got the most comfortable rivals,” said analyst Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It’s as if the world champion has himself chosen his own opponents, drawn up the rules and selected the referee.”

The most charismatic opposition figures are absent from the presidential race, including the 35-year-old lawyer Alexei Navalny, who won prominence with anti-corruption investigations and shows no fear in taking on Putin whose party he denounced as “crooks and thieves.”

The protest movement — which groups a collection of nationalists, ultra-leftists and liberals — has vowed protests in the days after the vote. Pro-Putin youth group Nashi (Ours) has vowed to match these with demonstrations in his support.

The marathon election in the nine time zone nation starts with the opening of polls in the Far East at 2000 GMT Saturday and culminates with their close in the western exclave of Kaliningrad 21 hours later at 1700 GMT on Sunday.

Independent monitoring groups — whom Putin has accused of being agents of the West — are despatching tens of thousands of monitors across Russia to check the vote. Putin himself ordered the installation of webcams in polling stations in a bid to ensure transparency.