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Most keen observers of the Kremlin are
convinced that Vladimir Putin will continue to be the
paramount leader of Russia. He is, officially, only the head of
government as prime minister. But his protégé, Dmitry Medvedev,
himself, who succeeded him Wednesday as Russia’s elected president
and head of state, referred to himself and Putin as a ruling
“tandem.”
Medvedev, after his grand
inauguration, nominated his former boss for prime minister. Just
before the lower house of Russia’s parliament the State Duma
voted, Medvedev said Putin “as head of government will play a key
role” in carrying out the strategy for development to 2020.
That
strategy and program of development is actually the product mainly
of Putin, during the years when he was president of Russia (2000 to
2008), with the help of Medvedev and other aides. Medvedev was
Putin’s chief of staff. Later, Putin named the former corporate
lawyer deputy prime minister. Then he nurtured Medvedev’s
political career to make him his “tandem partner.”
The Russian system allows only
two consecutive presidential terms. When Putin chose Medvedev—over
others leaders in his camp—to be his successor as president, it
was known to all in the Kremlin and in Putin’s and Madvedev’s
United Russia Party that they would exercise dual leadership to
continue the work that Putin had started during his eight years as
president.
Medvedev is respected as a
technocrat. Along with his other jobs, he was chairman from 2000 to
2008 of Russia’s powerful Gazprom, which is Europe’s principal
supplier of gas. He had never held elective political office before
becoming president.
When he was president, Putin
weakened parliament so he could rule with broader powers than his
predecessor Boris Yeltsin. His aim has always been to effectively
pursue his plans for a Russia that would take its proper place as a
world power and whose ordinary citizens would rise up from their
relative poverty and lack of social services compared with Europe.
That his original domestic agenda
will prevail became clearer in the speech Putin gave on being
elected PM. He called for lower taxes on oil companies, war against
inflation and increased spending on healthcare and education.
“For us the vitally important
task is to significantly increase the effectiveness and the
stability of the national economy,” he said, calling for
improvements in productivity, infrastructure and the investment
climate.
Medvedev is to be in charge of
foreign policy. He is expected to be more conciliatory than Putin
has been in dealing with foreign leaders. But he will surely push
ahead with the program to boost Russia’s role as a world force.
As if to punctuate that notion,
the celebration of the end of World War II in yesterday’s annual
Victory Parade Day was an occasion to show off Russia’s Topol-M
intercontinental ballistic missiles and other advanced weaponry
through Moscow’s Red Square. This was the first time such display
of Russian military might has been done since the fall of the Soviet
Empire.
Putin is extremely popular among
the Russian people. Only the Communists dare oppose him. In the
State Duma vote to confirm his nomination as prime minister, 392 out
of the 448 MPs aproved him.
He heads the United Russia Party
which dominates the country’s politics, getting as much as 70
percent of the national as well as the regional electorate.
Putin’s men, mostly his
colleagues at the KGB during the Soviet era, are still the key men
in the Kremlin. (Medvedev has no KGB connections.)
Medvedev will most likely yield
to Putin whenever the latter wants to be president again. And Putin
will have Medvedev as Russia’s prime minister.
That way both men will work
steadily to advance Russia as a sharer of the power with the United
States and other forces—China, Japan, India, Iran, the European
Union, OPEC, the largest transnational corporations, Greenpeace and
many others including maybe Asean—to shape the nonpolar global
order.
Good news from Burma’s zoo
AS the world grieves over the
plight of some one million Burmese made homeless, sick and
hungry—and about 100,000 killed by last week’s cyclone, as we
fume in anger over the ruling generals’ heartless refusal to allow
the entry of more international aid and rescue experts to their
country, we at least have some happy news from Rangoon’s city zoo.
Myint Nyein, director of the
city’s Zoological Garden, AFP reports said, “Several monkeys ran
away when their cages were destroyed . . . But they came back to the
zoo after the storm. Nothing happened to most of the animals.”
Dangerous animals such as lions,
tigers, crocodiles and snakes had been locked in sturdy cages inside
their pens before the storm, Myint Nyein said.
Some deer were injured by falling
trees, but they were being treated, he added.
“The animals are in good health
now. We are not expecting any epidemics to break out among the
animals,” he said. And there’s enough food and clean water for
them.
Most of Rangoon’s human
residents are struggling to find food, electricity and clean
drinking water since Cyclone Nargis struck overnight Friday, ripping
out power lines and severing water supplies.
The city still has food supplies,
but prices have doubled or tripled since the storm, making it
difficult for the poor to afford even rice.
The monkeys in the city’s zoo
are as lucky as the well-provided generals of the ruling junta.
These, with a mentality like that of the gorilla generals of the
Planet of the Apes, reiterated Friday that they were not yet ready
to allow the entry of international aid and foreign relief
personnel.
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