 | | Vladimir Putin turns misty-eyed as he addresses supporters during a rally in Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin in central Moscow. (Reuters) |
Washington, March 5: The only surprise in the Russian presidential election was that Vladimir Putin allowed himself to be seen in public with tears flowing down his right cheek and his left eye welled up, when it became clear that he would return to the Kremlin as Russia's President. Everything else went according to plan: Putin's victory was never in doubt, there is no one else in Russian politics to match him in popular appeal. Complaints of fraud were no surprise either. All that remains to be seen is how far western governments and their civil society will go in pressing the case that Putin won unfairly. On this unusually cold wintry morning in Washington, the disappointment is not that Putin won, but that he cried. Today was to have been Israel's day here. And that of the powerful Jewish lobby. But Putin's unexpected tears overtook everything else in this morning's news cycle, especially on radio which millions of Americans listen to while driving to work. Rarely do the President and the Prime Minister of a country travel abroad at the same time to the same city. Israel's President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both arrived in Washington on each other's heels. During the weekend President Barack Obama addressed the same organisation whose annual meeting the two Israeli leaders came to Washington for: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. At the time of writing, Obama is to meet Netanyahu in the White House. The two men dislike each other, but any joint appearance before or after this meeting will be masked by protocol and pretence. Despite the news this meeting will generate, the public here will be captivated throughout the day by Putin's tears, not a US-Israeli meeting dominated by hard policy, although it has been arranged with a lot of homework on both sides. Few things fascinate people as much as the sight of a leader with an "iron man" reputation dissolving in tears. Despite the unpleasant prospect of another Putin presidency in the Kremlin, the Americans are glad Russia's presidential election is out of the way. During the entire presidential campaign in Russia, the American media and the administration walked the tightrope so adroitly that it would have made real-life circus artistes envy such perfection. They criticised Putin as a fake democrat and a dictator with only the trappings of accountability to his people, but they dared not let it slip that the only alternative to Putin was worse for the West. Gennady Zyuganov, the communist candidate, wound up last night with about 17 per cent of the popular vote, a distant second to Putin's nearly 63 per cent. The American media, their strategic analysts and the administration carefully ignored the reality that an alternative to Putin, had he not won the first round with the mandatory 50-per-cent-plus votes, would have been a return to communist rule in the Kremlin, although through democratic means. America's conspiracy of silence was understandable. Had Zyuganov become President, Washington would have been hard put to explain a communist resurgence in Moscow where the dissolution of the Soviet Union heralded the idea that Marxism-Leninism was history. But even the most optimistic conservative in the US did not expect that Putin would lose yesterday's presidential election. So they criticised Putin all the way and ignored Zyuganov altogether. There were signs today that unlike after last December's parliamentary polls, widely assailed as fraudulent, there would be no chorus of cheating by Putin's party coming from western capitals. British Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesperson said today that the presidential "election has delivered a decisive result…. Even the non-governmental organisation polling data put Putin above the 50 per cent needed to win in the first round." Which is really what matters. France's foreign minister Alain Juppé said at a news conference that "I take note that President Putin is our interlocutor for years to come. Overall, despite some criticism... the re-election of President Putin is not in doubt." He added that "concerning France, our aim is to develop the partnership that we have with Russia, an absolutely strategic partnership on every level". In a reaction that obviously weighed accommodation of Putin coming from 10 Downing Street in London and Quai d'Orsay in Paris, the seat of France's foreign ministry, the US state department issued a statement this afternoon that left the options open for Obama to calibrate his stand at a later date if necessary. "The United States congratulates the Russian people on the completion of the presidential elections and looks forward to working with the President-elect after the results are certified and he is sworn in," spokesperson Victoria Nuland said. The statement did not pointedly congratulate Putin yet, but only the Russian people, postponing that unpleasant task until after he is sworn in. It also held out a small hope that the result may not, after all, be certified. Grudgingly accepting a statement by poll observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that "the election had a clear winner with an absolute majority", Nuland "urge(d) the Russian government to conduct an independent, credible investigation of all reported electoral violations". Sadly, allegations of some fraud today by the more credible of election observers such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe will perpetuate a myth that former President Boris Yeltsin, a darling of the West, was the architect of Russian democracy which Putin is alleged to have systematically undermined. In their zeal to attack Putin, no one in the US even refers in passing to a black day in Russia's recent history when Yeltsin attacked and destroyed Russia's elected parliament with tanks and troops in 1993. Independent observers credit that parliament to have been the most democratically elected under Mikhail Gorbachev two years earlier. It is a black day in Russia's history because Yeltsin was the only leader to physically destroy an elected parliament in Europe since the Nazis set fire to the German Reichstag in 1933. On the morning after the presidential poll, there were signals from Moscow, however, that in his new incarnation as President, Putin may be softening in his approach towards opponents. Acting swiftly, he invited his unsuccessful presidential rivals for talks and assured them that every claim of electoral malpractice would be investigated. Zyuganov declined Putin's invitation. Outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev instructed his justice minister to investigate why the authorities had refused electoral registration for a liberal opposition group. The President similarly asked Russia's prosecutor general to take another look at 32 criminal cases with alleged political motivation, including the jailing of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest oligarch. In all probability, Medvedev's last foreign visit as President will be to New Delhi at the end of March to attend a summit of Brics countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Putin's term as head of state will begin on May 7. | 
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