Medvedev
hosts Russia’s protest leaders
President Dmitry Medvedev
hosted leaders of Russia’s protest movement Monday, in a
rare move after an outburst of rallies against Vladimir Putin’s likely return
to the Kremlin.Medvedev discussed ideas for reforming Russia’s “far from ideal” political system
at a meeting that would have been almost unthinkable before mass opposition
protests broke out in the aftermath of December parliamentary polls. Leftist
radical Sergei Udaltsov, ex-Cabinet Minister Boris Nemtsov and liberal
politician Vladimir Ryzhkov – leaders of the movement that organized mass
rallies against the authorities – were all present at the meeting.” Our
political system is far from ideal and most of those present here subject it to
criticism and sometimes very harsh criticism,” Medvedev said at the meeting at
his Gorky residence outside Moscow. “There are people here with
different political opinions and that is good because we have to understand in
what direction our political system will develop,” he said in comments
broadcast on state television.Udalstov, Nemtsov and Ryzhkov – whose faces were
virtually invisible in state media in the last few years – were shown on state
television attending the meeting along with other leaders of unregistered political
parties. However state television had not by Monday evening broadcast any of
their comments to the Russian president.Nemtsov said ahead of the meeting that
he intended to press Medvedev for the release of 37 “political prisoners” and
demand constitutional changes barring all presidents from serving three terms.
Russian news agencies said that Medvedev discussed his proposals – already
submitted to parliament – to bring back elections for regional governors and
simplify the procedures for registering parties. However the demands for the
protest movement go far beyond this and its leaders have called for the
annulment of fraud-tainted Dec. 4 parliamentary election results and
far-reaching political reforms.Putin, president from 2000-08, is seeking to
reclaim the Kremlin in a March 4 vote after his four-year stint as prime
minister. Medvedev would then become prime minister in a job swap vehemently
criticized by the opposition. Opinion polls are predicting that Putin will win
the election but the opposition has vowed to hold multiple protests afterward
to protest his domination of Russian politics. According to a state pollster,
Putin will be elected president in the first round of March’s election with
more than half the vote, avoiding a run-off that would dent his authority on
the eve of his planned return to the Kremlin’s top job.Putin is likely to win
58.6 percent of the vote, far ahead of his closest rival, said Russia’s Public
Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), which has a history of accurately predicting the
results of Russian elections.“Putin will gain victory,” the pollster’s general
director, Valery Fedorov, told reporters in Moscow. The forecasts were based on a poll
of 1,600 people carried out across Russia this month. Second place will go to
veteran Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who is likely to win 14.8 percent,
the pollster said. A mood change against Putin among voters in major cities has
stoked speculation that the former KGB spy might face the humiliation of
winning less than half of the vote, undermining his claims of majority support
and triggering a second round.Putin even conceded this month that he may face a
second round, though he warned such a step would stoke infighting and undermine
Russia’s political stability. But the poll indicates that though Putin is
facing the biggest protests of his 12-year rule, his aides believe the former
KGB spy can still bring in enough votes to secure another six years as Kremlin
chief.Putin’s former chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, said the latest forecasts
for the elections indicated Putin could win 59-61 percent of the vote. The
news, he said on Twitter, would make many “sleep more soundly.”VTsIOM forecast
that nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky would win 9.4 percent followed by
billionaire financial whizz kid Mikhail Prokhorov with 8.7 percent and former
upper house Speaker Sergei Mironov with 7.7 percent. Opponents such as
Communist leader Zyuganov and blogger Alexei Navalny say that the election will
not be legitimate as officials are bound to falsify the results in Putin’s
favor.Putin was clearly taken aback by the scale of the protests against the
Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, initially dismissing opponents as the pawns of
the West and even branding them chattering monkeys. But as the seriousness of
the challenge became evident, Russia’s most popular politician changed
track, reshuffling his team and approving some planned changes to open up the
tightly controlled political system he still dominates. During the
parliamentary election, VTsIOM forecast Putin’s United Russia party would win
48.5 percent of the vote.
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