Blog posts by Marcus Svedberg

Prime Minister Putin may not be as popular as he used to be or as liked as the official polling suggest, but he is nevertheless the most popular politician in Russia and the other candidates are trailing far behind the former president.

The latest Levada survey, which is the most trustworthy polling organization, gives Putin a 66% win, which means that he would win easily in the first round.  None of the other four candidates comes close to those levels with Communist leader Zyuganov and nationalist Zhirinovsky at distant second while the two other candidates, Just Russia leader Mironov and billionaire Prokhorov, trailing even further behind.

Putin’s popularity has fallen during the last couple of years and the street protests after the parliamentary election in December illustrate the growing discontent with the ruling elite, personified by Putin, among the urban middle class.

But it would be a mistake to assume that he has turned deeply unpopular or that some other politician has become more popular. Putin’s approval rating has dropped from an abnormally high 85% four years ago to a more normal 65% today, according to Levada.

The protests have not been unimportant though as they seem to have encouraged Putin to adopt a more reformist stand. He has been talking and writing about the need for reforms in the election run-up, which would be very positive for the economy and the stock market if implemented.

The flag carrier Malev has, just like the Hungarian economy in general, been struggling for quite some time so the closure did not come as a major surprise. It had accumulated almost EUR 300mn of debt and was grounded after failure to service those debts.

It was also running into problems with the EU Commission over allegedly illegal state aid from the Hungarian government, which is the main owner of Malev. It remains unclear what airline(s) will fill the void but two low cost airlines have already tried to seize the opportunity.  

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister Boc in neighboring Romania resigned as a result of public protest that took place throughout the country in January. People are protesting against political incompetence and economic austerity in general.

President Basescu and Prime Minister Boc have been targeted and their ruling Democratic Liberal Party has dropped sharply in the opinion polls. PM Boc defended the austerity measures, which have been applauded by the IMF and foreign analysts, but stepped down in order to “defuse political and social tension.”

President Basescu quickly nominated former foreign minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu as Prime Minister. He promised to continue with the reforms and will now try to form a government. The winter of discontent is thus not over quite yet. 

I have been arguing that the elections (parliamentary and presidential) would not change the political situation in Russia in any fundamental way in the short term but that the increasingly assertive middle class represent the best hope for real change in Russia in the medium term.

I was partly right because the formal political set-up has not changed (United Russia won a majority in the Duma and Putin is still expected to become President) and the middle class could now become an engine of change. But it all happened sooner than expected and something did change the week after the parliamentary election on 4 December. The protests and vocal discontent with the ruling elite in general and Prime Minister Putin in particular suddenly became a political force too strong to be easily dismissed or repressed by the Kremlin. 

This force has been described as urban, middle class, young, and frustrated with the ruling elite. All that is probably true but that is also where the easy categorization ends. There is no single organization or leadership but rather a mix of groups with different interests that have united through social networks on the internet based on what they don’t like.

It is therefore difficult to predict how this frustration will play out. But given the fact that the protests so far have been larger than expected and calmer than feared, there is reason to believe this force will not go away anytime soon. Indeed, new demonstrations are scheduled on 24 December.

This should be welcomed as it will put pressure for free and fair elections, more plurality and increased transparency. But given the absence of a single organization, leadership or ideology behind the protesters, it is difficult (although not impossible) to see how this force can challenge the current leadership.

Putin and United Russia are, after all, popular (albeit not as popular as the official election results suggest) among a large share of the Russian population after more than a decade of rapid economic growth and increased stability. Some of the leaders behind the protests have been suggested as potential rivals to Putin for the presidency and an oligarch announced his candidacy this week. More names may appear in the near future but I doubt anyone will have the capacity to unite the protesters and become a serious challenge to Putin in March. 

The political situation in Russia has become more complex and uncertain, but there is also reason to believe things will change for the better even though it is too soon to speculate exactly how things will evolve. In the meantime, I believe one should be careful in comparing this with the color revolutions in Eastern Europe or with the uprisings in the Middle East.

I believe the inevitable change in Russia will follow its own logic, but I dare to say that it has started.     
 
 

It seems like both the Communists and the right-wing nationalist LDPR did better than expected by receiving 19.8% and 11.4% of the votes, according to exit polls, which is significantly better than the 11.6% and 8.1% they got in 2007. But the fact that a Just Russia, which originally was created as a fake competition to United Russia, received 12.8% of the votes, up from 7.7% in 2007, was a big surprise since they were more or less written off a few months ago.

The actual numbers may be changed when the official results are announced and United Russia will probably get their own majority since the votes cast for parties not passing the 7% threshold will be distributed proportionally to the four parties that passed the bar. My guess is that United Russia and Just Russia together will get more than 300 seats, which translates into a two thirds constitutional majority.

United Russia should in any case be able to continue to rule but the election results show that the electorate is growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with the ruling elite.