Putin’s Communist rival Gennady Zyuganov , who finished in second place with about 17 per cent of votes, called the vote “crooked, absolutely unfair and unworthy”, while a leading opposition activist, Vladimir Ryzhkov, said “these elections cannot be considered legitimate in any way”.

Addressing tens of thousands of supporters in Moscow late on the election day, a tearful Putin said the Russian people had clearly rejected the attempts of unidentified enemies to “destroy Russia’s statehood and usurp power”. “The Russian people have shown today that such scenarios will not succeed in our land”, said Putin, flanked by outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev. “They shall not pass!” “I promised you we would win. We have won, Glory to Russia. We won in an open and fair struggle”. Despite Putin’s claims on elections being open and fair opposition groups organized massive protest rallies in Moscow. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which had sent international observers to the elections, came to conclusion that Putin had an advantage over his rivals in terms of media presence and state resources. “The Prime Minister was given a clear advantage over his competitors in terms of media presence. In addition, state resources were mobilized at the regional level in his support“, said an OSCE statement. In addition to that, Golos, Russia’s only independent election watchdog, announced that Putin took just over 50 per cent of the vote, the exact amount needed for a formal victory in the first round, and confirmed that he was, for the majority of Russians, the most popular candidate.

Restoring authority

It did not take long for Vladimir Putin to reassert his authority over the country’s opposition. In fact it took him less than 24 hours to do so. On Monday evening, about 14,000 people from across the political spectrum – from nationalists to Communists – gathered in Moscow’s Pushkin Square to demonstrate against Putin’s victory. Failing to disperse after the time allotted for their protesting, they were dispersed by the police that used heavy-handed tactics to arrest about 250 people, including the informal leader of the movement, anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny. Around Pushkin Square, just 15 minutes from the Kremlin, thousands of police and Special Forces were on hand, with more officers waiting inside trucks. One person at the demonstration said it was the biggest security presence he had seen in the capital since 1991, when members of the then Soviet Union’s government tried to overthrow former president Mikhail Gorbachev in a coup. Protesters were united in their opinion that the election had not been fair. Referring to the fact that 11 out of 16 candidates have not been allowed to run by the electoral commission on various technicalities, Viktor, 69, a mathematician, said; “Many candidates were not allowed to participate, that’s the main problem”. Putin has dismissed the protests against his government as being backed by the United States, in an attempt to engineer an “Orange Revolution” in Russia similar to that which unseated the Ukrainian government in 2005. He has held demonstrations of his own, attracting tens of thousands – some estimates say hundreds of thousands – of supporters.

Vote for Putin is vote for stability

Having presided over a period of economic growth, shrinking income inequality, an assertive foreign policy, and integration of the Russian economy into the broader world economy, Putin’s mantra has been to appeal to citizens to vote for “stability”. His rule in the first term was marked by a booming economy, a restructuring of Russian power structures to temper the influence of oligarchs and increase Kremlin control; and military operations against separatists in Chechnya. The operations in Chechnya sparked several attacks on Russian civilian targets by separatist fighters, prompting Putin to adopt a hardline stand on terrorism. Overall, Russia, buoyed by high oil prices, maintained an impressive economic record in Putin’s first term, maintaining average growth rates of around 6.5 per cent, with external debt reduced to less than 30 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Politically, Putin tightened his hold over the government when his party, United Russia, won over two-thirds of the seats in the State Duma in the 2003 parliamentary elections. As such, he easily won his second term in 2004, securing 71 per cent of the vote. The United Russia leader has also identified a growing gap in the incomes of the rich and poor as being “a source of social tension”, and says he plans to address this through the diversification of the economy, the possible introduction of a luxury tax and by providing significant social safety nets – including increased pensions and measures to combat inflation – through the state. Putin has promised to increase doctors’ and university lecturers’ salaries to twice the national average and to improve the efficiency of the health and education sectors by introducing more performance monitoring.

Alternatives to Putin

While international media have written extensively on protesters and the nature of Russian elections, many have ignored the leading opposition figures. Masha Gessen in her recent interview said, “the best case scenario is that Putin will be out within six months”. But what are the alternatives to Putin? Perhaps the most worrying trend with regard to opposition is that almost all presidential candidates have looked to profit from this growing anger and subsequent support for the far right by hardening their views on immigration and adopting an increasingly nationalistic tone.

More than a million migrant workers come to Russia each year, mainly from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Caucasus seeking a better life and working conditions. Many of them stay in the country illegally, sending much of their wages back to their homelands. Several polls show about 60 per cent of the country’s population agree with the sentiment “Russia for the Russians”. Some flats in Moscow have signs reading: “I only rent to Russians”. Many Muscovites complain of people from Azerbaijan holding a monopoly on the capital’s street markets and people from Armenia taking all of the construction jobs. In January, Vladimir Putin suggested closing the door for up to 10 years to migrants who have repeatedly violated Russia’s migration laws. Russia has a visa-free agreement with most former Soviet republics and Putin said that he realised that many illegal migrants got extradited from Russia and then “go home at our expense and come back”. Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party’s candidate, has called for a plan to reinstate ethnic affiliations in Russian passports. During the Soviet Union this “nationality” category was used to facilitate discrimination against Chechens, ethnic Germans and Jews in Russia. In a televised debate on Wednesday, Mikhail Prokhorov, the only independent candidate in the race, also called for stricter border controls and visa regulation to prevent illegal immigration.

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