Russie

[Invité jabial]

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/disp…tory_id=9803892

Why Russia's president has picked such an obscure new prime minister

INTERNET search engines had a busy time looking for the name (and even picture) of Viktor Zubkov this week. Any government shake-up provokes questions, but rarely such a resounding one of “Who?” That was the general cry on September 12th, when President Vladimir Putin announced that the uncharismatic Russian prime minister for the past three-and-a-half years, Mikhail Fradkov, was resigning, to be replaced by Mr Zubkov (shown above, with Mr Putin, in 2004).

The superficial answer to the question is that the 65-year-old new prime minister, who was due to be confirmed by the lower house of parliament, the Duma, this weekend, is a former collective-farm manager who worked with Mr Putin in the 1990s in St Petersburg. He now heads the government's financial-crimes agency.

Yet the deeper answer is that the choice of Mr Zubkov is just one more instalment in the Kremlin's byzantine manoeuvrings to decide who will run Russia when Mr Putin steps down at the end of his second term next March. That is why Kremlinologists had expected a government upheaval this month, three months ahead of the parliamentary election and six months before the presidential election.

After all, there was no particular government crisis. As prime minister, Mr Fradkov, a former trade negotiator, was a study in obedience to Mr Putin. Unlike Mr Zubkov, his career shows obvious signs of a period working for the security services. Yet the grey Mr Zubkov is unlikely to prove a very different kind of prime minister.

The cabinet shuffle is better seen as part of the opaque selection process known as “operation successor”. Observers had expected Mr Fradkov to give way to one of the men Mr Putin has publicly groomed to take over. These are the two first deputy prime ministers: Sergei Ivanov, a suave KGB veteran and former defence minister, and the more bookish Dmitry Medvedev, a lawyer who chairs Gazprom and runs special projects for Mr Putin.

Neither of the two men has ever held any kind of elected office. Yet a concerted state media campaign has turned them into the country's best-known politicians after Mr Putin. Indeed, the speculation over whom Mr Putin might favour had become so feverish that Vedomosti, a usually well-informed newspaper, excited Moscow's chattering classes on the morning of September 12th with an anonymously sourced article predicting that Mr Ivanov was about to replace Mr Fradkov.

Once Mr Ivanov became prime minister, the story went, the game would be over: he would clearly then become president next year. Any opposition to the Kremlin has already been firmly squashed—and in any case Russian voters, who still give Mr Putin an approval rating of over 80%, would certainly respect his wishes. There is, moreover, a precedent: Mr Putin himself, then an obscure ex-KGB lieutenant-colonel, was chosen by Boris Yeltsin to be prime minister in August 1999 and went on to succeed Mr Yeltsin as president at the end of the year.

On this basis, the unexpected choice of Mr Zubkov bears three possible interpretations. One is that Mr Putin simply wants to keep the world guessing, before plumping for one of the two front-runners. A second is that he has a wholly different successor in mind—who might be Mr Fradkov himself (or, even more surprisingly, Mr Zubkov). The third is that Mr Putin has not yet decided who it should be. “This isn't a solution, but a way of putting off the solution until later,” concludes Yulia Latynina, a political commentator.

Some other analysts offer a fourth idea: that Mr Putin may be laying the groundwork for staying on after March 2008. Ways might be found round the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms. One might be to arrange for a straw man to win the election and then step down, paving the way for Mr Putin to return triumphantly in a snap election. A second might be to transfer the presidency's power to another job. “I think Putin will stay, either through elections or without,” says Yevgeny Volk, of America's conservative Heritage Foundation. “There are strong forces that need him to stay.”

In truth, though, as Masha Lipman, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, comments, today's Kremlinologists are little more reliable than were their predecessors, who would spend hours minutely scrutinising photographs of the politburo at Red Square parades. “We are involved in deciphering signals from above. It's total opaqueness in decision-making. It signifies the separation of the state from society.” That is unlikely to bother Mr Putin, or his chosen successor, too much.

[Stranger]

The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine

By Mark Ames

Here's a real-life superhero dilemma: What do you do when you're the world's most powerful news and opinion magazine, carrying the English-language torch of freedom on behalf of your million-plus high-net-worth readers across the globe, and suddenly you spot injustice on the Eurasian horizon: Sham elections in an oil-rich Eurasian country, resulting in a one-party parliament; its autocratic leader just pushed through constitutional amendments allowing him to remain in power for life; and it's waging a campaign to bully Western oil companies out of their lucrative oil fields, in spite of contracts and investments made.

If the country in question is Kazakhstan, and you're The Economist, then you know exactly what to do: Put Vladimir Putin on the cover and scare the shit out of your readers by sounding the "Hitler Alarm!" threat he poses to mankind. It doesn't matter that you run a version of this story almost every week. Or that the story you decide to run in the wake of Kazakhstan's sham elections happens to have been run in almost the exact same form by all of your colleagues FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO.

Putin Capone (http://www.exile.ru/transient/271/lead-economist1-putin.jpg)

For The Economist, the Putin-as-Fascist story isn't bound by traditional Newtonian concepts of time or space, let alone the basic principles of Western journalism. It's a story that can be played like a deck of trump cards. No matter what else happens in the world - for example, the mega-clusterfuck in Iraq, a war that The Economist screamed for in a campaign capped by its infamous "The Case For War" editorial - when a story threatens to confuse or upset their agenda, the weekly can just drop the Putin-Hitler trump card. It works like a dream, every time.

[…]

The Economist even played their Fascism card back in the Yeltsin years…although to entirely different purposes, as this 1998 email from scholar Anatol Lieven to David Johnson shows:

"Dear David, attached is part of my book on Chechnya…The relevance of the argument is demonstrated by the latest article in The Economist: "Could Russia Go Fascist?" - which translates as - "Shoudn't we give billions of dollars to support Yeltsin and our darling Young Reformer Chubais because Russians are intrinsically given to imperialism and aggression and Chubais assures us that he and Yeltsin are all that is standing between Russia and Fascism." Some of the people you can indeed fool all the time. Yours, Anatol Lieven"

In 1998, The Economist lied about a Russian Fascist threat in order to prop up a wildly unpopular, corrupt regime, which had overseen the total collapse of its economy, devastated the health of its citizens, and forever ruined the concepts of "liberalism," "free markets" and "free speech" in the minds of those who survived it…all because it seemed to benefit us.

[…]

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?AR…mp;IBLOCK_ID=35

[Timur]

Ce qui est sûr c'est que la très grande majorité des russes veut que Putin reste.

[Invité jabial]

C'est une bête question de fierté nationale. Je pense qu'ils auront à le regretter.

[Taranne]

Ce qui est sûr c'est que la très grande majorité des russes veut que Putin reste.

Ca tombe bien, il n'a aucune intention de partir.

[Mike]

Ce qui est sûr c'est que la très grande majorité des russes veut que Putin reste.

Avec le contrôle qu'il exerce sur les médias, pas étonnant. D'autre part les russes n'ont pas été habitués à contester le pouvoir.

[Taranne]

Je suis surpris de ne pas l'être:

russie

Vladimir Poutine n'exclut pas de se représenter… en 2012

Le Premier ministre russe, Viktor Zoubkov, a été adoubé par la Douma. Il n'écarte pas de se présenter à l'élection présidentielle de 2008. Vladimir Poutine pourrait alors se présenter de nouveau en 2012.

Le président russe Vladimir Poutine n'a pas exclu de se représenter en 2012 à l'élection présidentielle, a déclaré à l'AFP la politologue Oksana Antonenko qui venait d'assister à une rencontre d'experts avec le chef de l'Etat. "Il a dit qu'il était encore trop tôt et qu'il ne voulait pas y penser maintenant. Mais il souhaite s'assurer de la continuité de la politique qu'il a commencée", a-t-elle indiqué. La constitution russe interdit de se présenter à plus de deux mandats d'affilés mais pas de se représenter après une alternance.

La Douma, chambre basse du Parlement, a entériné - 381 pour, 47 contre et huit abstentions - vendredi la nomination du nouveau Premier ministre russe Viktor Zoubkov, qui apparaît désormais comme un des prétendants potentiels à la succession de Vladimir Poutine en 2008. Mais il ne pourrait s'agir que d'un président de portage dont la candidature ne viserait que la réélection de Vladimir Poutine quatre ans plus tard. Dans un rapide survol de son programme devant le Parlement, il a promis de s'atteler à la lutte contre la corruption, de moderniser le complexe militaro-industriel et de réduire la dépendance agricole de la Russie.

"Une de nos tâches stratégiques est le redressement de notre complexe militaro-industriel. Des moyens financiers sont prévus au budget pour cela", a déclaré le dauphin de Vladimir Poutine. "La création d'une économie innovante est un objectif essentiel pour nous", a-t-il ajouté sans donner plus de détails. Cet ancien chef du Service fédéral de surveillance financière chargé de la lutte contre le blanchiment d'argent a appelé à l'adoption d'une loi contre la corruption "qui imprègne la société" russe.

Le choix de ce fonctionnaire austère, inconnu du grand public, pour un poste considéré comme un tremplin potentiel vers la présidence a créé la surprise. Ajoutant au suspense, le nouveau Premier ministre a déclaré jeudi qu'il pourrait briguer la succession de Vladimir Poutine, dans l'impossibilité de se représenter en mars 2008 après deux mandats consécutifs. Les deux prétendants potentiels les plus cités étaient jusque-là les vice-Premiers ministres Dmitri Medvedev et Sergueï Ivanov. Ce dernier, omniprésent dans les médias, était même donné favori.

Deux thèses s'opposent désormais sur la succession. Pour les uns, Viktor Zoubkov va succéder le temps d'un mandat à Vladimir Poutine, qui pourra ensuite se représenter. Pour les autres, il va préparer le terrain pour un autre candidat que le chef de l'Etat adoubera plus tard, probablement vers la fin de l'année.

latribune.fr

[Ronnie Hayek]

L'homme qui voulait s'accrocher au pouvoir:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7022474.stm

Putin eyes prime minister's job

Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the possibility of becoming a future prime minister by agreeing to enter the December parliamentary polls.

Mr Putin, who must leave office as president next year, said suggestions he might seek to become Russian prime minister were "entirely realistic".

He told a congress of United Russia that he would head the party's list though not actually become a member.

By being on the list he is guaranteed a seat in the next parliament.

The BBC's Mike Sanders says Mr Putin's announcement comes as a shock, but is the clearest indication yet that he is determined to stay at the centre of power in Russia.

According to the Russian constitution, he is not allowed to run for a third consecutive term as president in March.

'Radical change'

"As far as heading the government is concerned - this is a quite realistic suggestion but it is still too early to think about it," Mr Putin said.

"Two conditions must be met first - United Russia must win the election and a decent, capable and modern person with whom I work as a team should be elected as president," he added.

His announcement follows years of speculation about what he might do after his last presidential term ends.

Pro-Kremlin political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky described it as a radical change.

"We can forget our favourite cliche that the president is tsar in Russia," Mr Pavlovsky told AFP news agency.

"It's the most politically logical solution to the problem of what Putin does when he leaves office," he said.

Andrei Ryabov from the Carnegie Moscow Center told the BBC he sees Mr Putin's decision as a tactical step:

"It's hard to imagine Putin would become prime minister after being a super-popular president. The dual system is bad for Russia - Putin must be worried… he would not want to be junior to the president," he said.

"For Putin to be the most senior figure, the constitution would have to be changed. And Putin has always made it clear he wants no changes to the constitution," he added.

[DeadZone]

http://www.lalibre.be/article.phtml?id=5&a…p;art_id=374699

pour ceux que ca interesse, reportage ce soir 21h55 sur Poutine (La Une).