MOSCOW – The coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s stagnant economy are among the challenges facing President Vladimir Putin after a controversial national referendum that paved the way for him to remain in power until 2036, experts warned.
Putin thanked Russian voters for their “support and confidence” on Thursday after election officials confirmed that nearly 78 percent of voters supported the constitutional amendments, one of which will see the limits of the presidential term restored, allowing Putin will run again for the job in 2024 and in 2030 if he chooses.
“The result of the vote shows that the vast majority of citizens believe that we can work better. And the so-called expanded government, from municipalities to the president, is obliged to do everything possible to justify the high trust placed in it by the people, “he said in a speech on the state television channel Rossiya 1.
Noting a high voter turnout of nearly 68 percent, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, had previously declared the result a “triumph.”
However, the Russian leader “faces a number of challenges, some of which are quite fundamental,” Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center, told NBC News.
The most immediate is the coronavirus pandemic. Russia has registered nearly 655,000 cases, according to the country’s crisis response center. Only the United States and Brazil have reported more. More than 9,500 people have died from respiratory disease in Russia.
Perhaps their biggest challenge is the economy, which has stagnated for nearly a decade and led to a slow but steady decline in most of the population’s living standards, Trenin said.
It has also been greatly affected by the sharp drop in oil prices when people stopped traveling and factories stopped producing during the pandemic, lowering the value of the ruble in world markets and affecting prices in the country.
In an opinion piece published on the website of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Grigory Yudin, a sociologist at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, argued that the true purpose of the referendum, and in particular, to publish the participation number, had a specific objective. for Putin, giving him “an instrument of moral pressure” to push back the elite and the bureaucracy.
Russia’s political class, he argues, is dissatisfied with the president after two disappointing years that have seen public discontent grow, putting the system in an uncertain position.
“Putin feared they would begin to doubt his ability to administer the system,” Yudin wrote, adding that this is also a tool of pressure on “a very skeptical middle class, which Putin is gradually losing,” as well as any potential opponents. from within the system.
The referendum results are intended to show that it still has the support of a vast majority of the public, Yudin added. “If this perception prevails, this is a good result for Putin.”
Wednesday’s vote was the final phase in the effort to amend the constitution. The amendments earlier this year already approved votes in both houses of parliament, in the 85 regional legislatures, and received approval from the Russian Supreme Court. The vote was a means for the Kremlin to demand a public mandate to make radical changes.
The reform package also transferred the power to appoint the Kremlin Prime Minister to the lower house of parliament and defined marriage constitutionally as a union between a man and a woman, among other things. But the most important provision simply “zeroed” the limits of the presidential term by defining them as limited to two consecutive terms, rather than all time.
The Russian opposition and independent observers have yelled disgustingly, claiming that the results are obviously manipulated. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who urged citizens to boycott the referendum and not participate in legitimizing the result, called the results “a false and huge lie.”
While he had cleared the way to run for president again, the specter of the political transition remains important.
“Putin himself hardly believes he can rest on his laurels from now until 2036, as some critics suggest,” Trenin said. “It needs to offer the Russians a path to follow that will energize them. And all this will be very difficult. “
