DMITRY ASTAKHOV/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AP

President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on November 29.

THE December 2 parliamentary elections in Russia became a personal triumph for President Vladimir Putin when United Russia, the party whose candidates’ list he agreed to head, polled an impressive 64 per cent of the votes. In the last elections in 2004, it won less than 38 per cent of the votes.

Together with two other pro-Kremlin parties – the Liberal Democratic Party of ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Just Russia of Sergei Mironov, the Speaker of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament – Putin loyalists have won close to 90 per cent of the seats in the 450-member state Duma, the Lower House. The remaining seats will go to the Communists, the only Opposition party that has cleared the 7 per cent threshold to get into the Duma.

Putin described the election as a vote of confidence on his leadership of Russia. His phenomenal popularity is worthy of the Guinness Book of Records: after eight years in power he still has the support of over 80 per cent of Russians, according to opinion polls. Putin is credited with pulling Russia back from the brink of a catastrophe to which it had been pushed by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Putin has ended the disastrous war in separatist Chechnya, which Yeltsin launched, and has brought the region back into Russia’s fold. Putin has presided over the strong economic revival and re-emergence of Russia as a global power. He has restored for Russians a sense of dignity and pride in their country.

The triumph of the pro-Putin parties looks particularly impressive against the crushing defeat of the pro-Western liberal parties, which failed to win even a single seat. The vote against the liberals amounted to an outright condemnation of the disastrous “shock therapy reforms” they had steered during Yeltsin’s presidency.

The Duma elections have further soured Russia’s already strained relations with the West. The Bureau for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (BDIHR), the human rights watchdog of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, refused to send observers to Russia to monitor the elections, citing invitation delays and visa problems. Putin denounced the move as a provocation masterminded by the United States in an effort to “de-legitimise” the vote. Observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who agreed to monitor the elections, denounced what they claimed was “a clear abuse of power and a clear violation of international commitments and standards”.

PACE leader Luc van den Brande of Belgium said Putin had no right to campaign on behalf of a party, as this was “incompatible with European democratic standards”. “There are a lot of concerns about the evolution of democracy in the country,” he told a post-election press conference in Moscow.

The U.S. expressed “concern regarding the use of state administrative resources in support of United Russia,” while Germany called the elections “neither free, fair nor democratic”.

Moscow firmly rejected the West’s criticism, saying it betrayed the latter’s disappointment with the overwhelming support Russian voters had given to Putin’s independent domestic and foreign policies. Russia was acting in its national interests instead of following “foreign prescriptions in its domestic and foreign policies”, Putin said.

“Russians will never allow their country to go down a destructive road, the way it happened in some post-Soviet states,” the Russian leader said in apparent reference to “coloured revolutions” the West stage-managed in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

The Russian Foreign Ministry recalled a controversial vote counting in Florida that awarded victory to George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential race to say that the U.S. had no business teaching other countries about democracy.

The West was clearly frustrated to see the Russian parliamentary elections, strengthening Putin’s hand ahead of a far more crucial presidential poll scheduled for next year. On March 2, Russia will elect a new President as Putin is barred by the Constitution from seeking a third consecutive term. Many Putin allies have urged him to amend the Constitution to allow himself to run again. They cited the danger of instability if the next President turns out to be a less adroit leader. In Russia, where the President wields enormous powers, a change of leadership is indeed fraught with big risks.

However, Putin has categorically refused to bend the law to stay on for another four years. He wants to become the first Russian President to leave the post strictly in line with the Constitution. (Boris Yeltsin did resign of his own will, but he did so because of his failing health.) Putin said he would not tinker with democracy.

“I consider it crucially important to make democratic principles and institutions and respect for the law and the Constitution part of the practical life of our country,” he said in an interview. “It is in this way that we can lay genuinely solid foundations for our country’s stability.”

Respect for the Constitution may be an important factor of stability, but it certainly takes more in Russia to guarantee stability and continuity of the regime under a new leader. It may be recalled that all previous leaders in Russia saw their policies rejected and their allies banished once they left power. But Putin said he wanted to keep a grip on power even after retirement. “I can’t say: ‘Okay, guys, I’ve done my job and I’m off. You can do as you like now.’ It’s no way I’ll do this,” the 55-year-old President said in an interview.

The resounding support that Putin received in the parliamentary elections gives him a strong mandate to promote a loyal ally as his successor and to remain a key player in the country’s governance after his presidency ends. “The result [of the Duma vote] will set the tone for the election of a new President,” Putin had said in the run-up to the elections. He had also said that a vote for United Russia, whose list he headed, would give him the “moral authority” to control the new administration after he stepped down.

Putin has refused to reveal the name of his chosen successor now, as he does not wish to become a lame-duck President long before his term expires. Opinion polls suggest that a presidential candidate supported by Putin has a good chance of winning in the very first round. However, installing his preferred successor in the Kremlin is but the first, and the easiest, part of Putin’s plan. Whoever steps into his shoes, Putin stressed, would not be able to veer off course.

“The new President will have to seek my advice,” Putin said at an annual meeting of the so-called Valdai Club of foreign experts on Russia in October. “And he will have to take into account the fact that my course is backed by the majority in the nation.”

Retaining some pivotal role in Russian politics after retirement is something that Putin’s predecessors (those of them who did not die in office) did not find easy. Nikita Khrushchev stayed under virtual house arrest until his death after he lost power in a Polit Bureau conspiracy, and Mikhail Gorbachev became a persona non gr ata in the Kremlin after Yeltsin pulled the rug from under his chair by engineering the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The most effective way for Putin to continue to dominate politics after he retires is to head United Russia, experts feel. Putin may either become Speaker in the new Duma or just be the leader of the ruling party. Either position will allow him to control the new administration.

DMITRY BELIAKOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Supporters of United Russia celebrate the party's victory in the parliamentary polls at Red Square in Moscow on December 3.

The Russian Constitution gives Parliament many real powers. The State Duma endorses the appointment of the Prime Minister and that of most Ministers, approves the state budget and can impeach the President. Until now, these powers remained largely on paper as the parliamentary majority was controlled from the Kremlin. Once this control passes to ex-President Putin, the legislature may become a truly independent branch of authority.

This will reconfigure the entire power set-up in Russia, by redistributing power from the President to Parliament.

“I’m worried that too much depends today on one man [the President],” Putin said at the Valdai Club meeting. “I want to decentralise authority.”

Concentration of power in the Kremlin has helped Putin restore the authority of the federal centre over provinces and cut short the separatism that blossomed under Yeltsin. But it has also led to the dramatic strengthening of a corrupt and omnipotent bureaucracy, which hampers economic growth. In his annual state-of-the-nation address two years ago, Putin described the hydra-headed civil service as a “closed and arrogant caste which perceives state service as just another kind of business”. “We have no plans to hand over control of the country to an inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy,” the President pledged.

Putin’s attempt to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles to economic modernisation by putting his trusted aides in charge of major state-controlled corporations has resulted in the rise of rival power clans in the Kremlin. Their turf war over assets and influence has spilled over the Kremlin walls and poses the danger of destabilisation after Putin’s retirement. This prompted one of Putin’s close allies, drug control chief Viktor Cherkesov, to issue a public warning in November of “a war in which there can be no winners”.

The infighting in the Kremlin has convinced Putin of the urgent need to promote political competition and multi-party democracy.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about how Russia should be governed after 2008. I see no solution to the problem of stable development of the country other than democracy and a multi-party system,” Putin told the Valdai Club academics. “If we don’t build a credible multi-party system, a civil society that will protect the nation and the state from mistakes and wrong policies by the ruling elites, we won’t achieve anything. We have no other way forward,” Putin added.

He made it clear that he favoured a two-party system. If United Russia, which positions itself as a conservative centrist party, fails to live up to people’s expectations, then left-leaning Just Russia or some other social-democratic party can take over.

Putin’s long-term vision for Russia encompasses a gradual transition from a presidential republic to a parliamentary democracy. However, “in a midterm historical perspective Russia will need a strong presidential authority,” Putin said, as it would take another decade or so for “normal political parties” to emerge.

Leadership of the ruling party would help Putin push forward the process of party building. It would also give him an ideal platform from which to run for President again in 2012 if he decides to. After all, Putin will be only 59 years old when the 2012 presidential election is due.