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President Putin presents new plans to hold power

Russian President Putin proposed a sweeping constitutional reform that would give him several options to retain power after 2024, when his term ends

By: EBR - Posted: Friday, January 24, 2020

"The constitution is a living instrument”, Putin said recently. "In principle, it can be changed in one way or another."
"The constitution is a living instrument”, Putin said recently. "In principle, it can be changed in one way or another."

by Hans Izaak Kriek* 

Russian President Putin proposed a sweeping constitutional reform that would give him several options to retain power after 2024, when his term ends.

The announcement led to the resignation of Prime Minister Medvedev’s government, showing that a full reset of Russia’s governance system is underway and that Medvedev eventually will not succeed Putin as president, as he did one term in 2008.

The Russian leader has suggested staying in power longer than the constitution now allows. "The constitution is a living instrument”, Putin said recently. "In principle, it can be changed in one way or another."

Putin, who has been in power for exactly 20 years, must resign as President in 2024 under current rules. What happens then is the big question that hangs over Russia like a dark cloud. A Russian journalist asked the question at Putin’s press conference, which has always been meticulously prepared with the questioners.

"What can be done? Remove the clause on uninterrupted terms" Putin replied, dropping a silence aware of the impact of his words. "We now have a limit of two consecutive installments. Your obedient servant has fulfilled two terms, then left his post, and had the constitutional right to return later as president. Some political scientists and public figures are bothered by this."

Putin thereby referred to the infamous ’leapfrog-over-plan’ with which he circumvented the deadline in 2008: he had Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev installed as president, became Prime Minister himself, and in 2012 changed jobs again with Medvedev, who had convenient presidency terms let it stretch from four to six years, so that Putin could sit in the Kremlin for another twelve years.

The Russian president ignored the precise consequences of such a constitutional amendment. But for many Russians, his suggestions to amend the constitution as the end of his term limit is approaching confirmed their suspicion: President Putin is working on a construction to stay in power. All the more so because Putin said that almost the entire constitution is liquid.

Another construction that Russians take into account is that Putin will become chairman of a future council that is above the president. For example, a possible council after a close integration of Russia and Belarus. This is currently being negotiated. In neighboring Kazakhstan, sole ruler Nosoeleltan Nazarbayev opted for another option: he appointed himself chairman of a new security council over the president.

"We must prepare well", Putin said about his suggestions. "And only after a broad social debate." He said he was not worried about a lack of competition. "We have twelve political parties at the federal level. That meets the requirements of political competition. "He ignored the fact that parties who want a new president are not allowed to participate in elections.

Today, it’s up to the president to choose the prime minister (the lower house of parliament only “consents” to the decision) and appoint cabinet members. Putin proposed that the full approval procedure for the prime minister take place in the lower house; same for cabinet ministers, who would be picked by the prime minister, not the president. The latter would be obliged to accept the parliament’s decisions.

Moving on, Putin suggested giving the upper house of parliament, which, unlike the directly elected lower chamber, consists of regional representatives, a say in the key security, defense and foreign policy appointments, today an exclusive province of the president.

He also signaled his consent to a change that would eliminate the loophole that allowed him to return to the Kremlin in 2012: the constitutional formula that bans a president from serving more than two consecutive terms. According to Putin, he’s fine with eliminating the word “consecutive,” which would bar him from reclaiming the presidency in the election of 2030, when he turns 78.

It also would have limited the ability of Medvedev to serve as president for more than one term in addition to the four years he already served. But Medvedev’s resignation as prime minister and the job offer Putin has made him as number two on Russia’s Security Council, an important advisory body but not as key as the cabinet means, he’s not likely to be Putin’s chosen successor.

By proposing curbs on presidential powers, Putin opens three paths for himself after 2024 that are less straightforward than a direct prolongation of his powers, as has occurred in Belarus and several ex-Soviet Central Asian nations. One is to become a prime minister with strengthened powers and stay on indefinitely. Another is to try running the country from the parliament speaker’s chair. The third is to govern from behind the scenes as the leader of the parliament’s dominant party, the way Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice Party, runs Poland.

All of these options require continued control over Russia’s political system, sufficient for the parliament to remain, in effect, a one-party body.

As political commentator I think that in a noncompetitive system without free access to elections for parties and candidates and with unfair, falsified elections, the transfer of powers to parliament would, most likely, mean the transfer of these powers to the leadership of the party that dominates in parliament. Such a configuration, which resembles the Chinese one, will allow Putin to retain de facto control indefinitely, while putting forward an entire group of potential successors who would compete among themselves.

But even Putin’s knowledge and control of the Russian political system don’t provide a strong guarantee of lifelong power retention or, perhaps more importantly for Putin, a lifelong personal security guarantee.

Strengthening other players in a complex system doesn’t fit his leadership style. That’s not what he has done for the last two decades.

That’s what makes another proposal Putin threw out in recently address especially intriguing. Putin would like to enshrine in the constitution a clear role for the State Council, a body that now has only an advisory capacity. Putin created the council soon after taking power in 2000, and it includes the regional governors, the speakers of both houses of parliament and parliamentary party leaders.

Today, the president is chairman of the council. But that won’t necessarily be the case after the proposed reform; Putin may opt to head the council after giving up the presidency, which would make his post-2024 role a lot like that of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who gave up his old post last year to serve as head of the country’s newly empowered Security Council.

Putin’s constitutional reform proposals are so far-reaching and, in some key aspects, so vaguely formulated that a lot of questions remain unanswered. Putin proposed adopting the reform by popular vote, but it’s unclear how such a vote could be structured (perhaps Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s constitutional referendum of 2017 can serve as a model).

Establishing the primacy of Russian laws over international treaties appears to require the adoption of an entirely new constitution, since it reconsiders one of the current document’s basic tenets. The powers and composition of the State Council are also unclear, as is the extent to which the parliament’s powers are to be expanded; for example, whether it will be able to fire ministers, not just appoint them.

There’s a reason, however, for Putin to put out all the ideas now. The Russian establishment has been getting worried about the direction of the transition and about Putin’s intentions. Now, it should be clear to everyone that he’s about to seek a role that’s different from the presidency, a position above the fray.

It’s not in Putin’s interest to announce exactly which one, but it’s important for him to signal that he’s in charge of working out the final shape of things — and that he intends to stick around after 2024 in some capacity.

Otherwise he’d let his successor come up with any constitutional changes that might be necessary.

The Russian opposition, of course, has read the signals, too. “The main outcome of Putin’s address: How dumb and/or crooked are all those who said Putin would leave in 2024,” said Alexei Navalny, Putin’s best-known political opponent. Indeed, whatever the formal shape of the political system Putin intends to create at the end of his presidency, Russia’s real constitution is in Putin’s head. That’s where the missing details will come from, too.

*International political commentator for European Business Review and editor-in-chief at Kriek Media

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