'Proven leader' Putin well ahead of rivals

MOSCOW - Incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin is a proven national leader and a favorite in the upcoming presidential election, a political analyst said.

Putin has created a political system capable of adjusting itself to tackling challenges, said Alexei Mukhin, director general of the Center for Political Information, a think tank based in Russia's capital Moscow.

"It is very important that this political system provided support to the authorities, allowing them to feel confident both in foreign and domestic policy," Mukhin said.

According to Mukhin, under Putin, Russia has "returned to the great geopolitical game, in which it is already a player".

Putin has created a two-tier economy consisting of private and public sectors, allowing the country's institutions to withstand the 2008 financial crisis, make up for the losses and resist a series of financial sanctions introduced by the West since 2014, Mukhin said.

Therefore, Putin has no replacement in Russia from the point of view of political weight and influence, which makes him a likely landslide winner.

Polls opened at 8 am on Sunday in the Far East regions of Chukotka and Kamchatka. Voting will conclude at 8 pm in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost region.

Opinion polls give Putin support of around 70 percent, or nearly 10 times the backing of his nearest challenger.

Mukhin said the campaign, which features eight candidates, is taking place on several fronts. The first one, on which Putin is active, is a platform where he has his own consolidated electorate not claimed by the rest of the candidates.

Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Pavel Grudinin, an entrepreneur supported by the Russian Communist Party, said Mukhin, are on the second platform and are trying to grab electors from each other.

The remaining five candidates, who have very little support from voters, share the third platform, Mukhin said.

The analyst does not predict any protests following the election in Russia, since the recent attempts to organize mass protests failed due to the absence of real opposition.

"The presidential administration has done a lot by facilitating the process of registration and creation of parties, as well as liberalizing the electoral legislation. It has created conditions for the emergence of the opposition, but it did not emerge," Mukhin said.

High hopes

The electorates have pinned high hopes on Putin, Mukhin said.

"Putin has outlined a number of problems and tasks that will have to be solved in the event of his victory in the election, first of all, the creation of a person-centered social state that will pay more attention not to the development of the political system, but to creating a comfortable environment for Russian citizens," he said.

Putin served as president for two terms from 2000 to 2008. He was then succeeded by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev between 2008 and 2012, when the two reversed their posts.

Xinhua - Ap - Reuters

(China Daily 03/19/2018 page11)