The power is approaching the parliamentary elections in a state of political crisis, which it risks not to overcome even after December 4. Those are conclusions of the Centre of Strategic Research /CSR/. Experts analyse in their report political steps of the higher authorities of the country over the past six-month period. They say that Vladimir Putin’s return as president and Dmitry Medvedev’s transfer to the position of prime minister after the 2012 election cause weakening of the tandem.
The public forms “a negative mood towards the power of majority,” which is able to involve conforming part of the public, the Kommersant quotes the report. The CSR’s report is devoted to “moving forces and future of Russia’s political transformation.” Experts say this force is the “middle class,” which has been formed during the “obese years” of Putin’s decade and which by 2020 will make a majority /of about 60 percent of the population/. Now the centre estimates its share at 20-30 percent depending on a region. This is the moving force, tuned to modernisation, which during the election cycle of 2011-2012 “turned out to be not represented in the party or political field,” president of the CSR, Mikhail Dmitriyev, said on Thursday.
Slump of trust towards the power and its ‘first two personalities’ started back in 2010. The biggest descent of trust was registered exactly with the “middle class,” which logically should be grateful to the power for its appearing. In order to “suspend or slow down the tendency,” the CSR suggested in March “providing party representation on the right wing.”
But the power has not registered a single new party and refused from the “Right Force” project with Mikhail Prokhorov. Moreover, “the castling of the tandem” was made “in the variant, where the “Medvedev brand” was lost,” Mikhail Dmitriyev said. The report says that the “Putin brand” suffered from the castling much less, but it is facing the problems of its political aging.” Thus, “the castling of the tandem has weakened the power’s possibilities for self-changing or opportunities to establish a dialogue with the society.”
Nowadays, the CSR is doing research for the finance ministry, the ministry of regional development and for the ministry of economic development, as well as for commercial companies, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports. The supervisory board of the centre feature Governor of the Irkutsk Region Dmitry Mezentsev and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak. According to the report, “Moving forces and future of Russia’s political transformation,” return of Vladimir Putin to presidency and Dmitry Medvedev’s transfer to the position of prime minister following the 2012 election are going far beyond a formal reshuffling of highest officials and cause weakening of the tandem.
Authors of the report write, that in the tandem “there has formed a natural specification, where Putin and Medvedev appealed to opposing social poles. Brands of the tandem participants added to each other, masking thus the growing conflict of interests of those poles.” The castling of the tandem has caused weakening of its base on the right wing of the electorate, “has weakened the power’s possibilities for self-changing or opportunities to establish a dialogue with the society.”
Formerly, the tandem had two point of attraction, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta quotes Director General of the Centre for Political Technologies Igor Bunin as saying. “Conservators have supported Putin, while liberals placed their hopes on Medvedev. If he remained the president and appointed /a kamikaze/, like Kudrin, the prime minister, and if Putin ran /the United Russia/ - sort of controlled by his majority most of the processes, he would remain a centre of attraction for conservative forces. Thus, it would have been possible to have both conservative and liberal allies of the power.”
The Centre for Strategic Research, the author of the programme for Putin’s first presidential term, outlined tendencies regretful for him and for his party, the Vedomosti writes. The authors say: while in 1990s the society was mono-pole /low-income population/, the economic growth of the 2000s emerged two poles – those with low income and the middle class.
“Vladimir Putin’s and the party of power’s traditional rhetoric did not respond expectations /of the middle class/, as it was addressed to other social layers,” the report reads. “The attempt to use for this purpose Dmitry Medvedev’s rhetoric was over after the castling of the tandem.” A new way of rejection began.
The situation requires more freedom for the opposition, but tolerance to risks has only lowered – this causes the expulsion of Mikhail Prokhorov from the Right Force and the attack on the Fair Russia Party, this also causes the United Russia members’ aspiration to receive support of 70 percent voters, though this achievement would be taken not as a proof of the party’s popularity, but as a proof of dishonest elections, the report reads.