Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 25 – All his PR
efforts notwithstanding, Vladimir Putin “is not afraid of the virus but of the
people” and is not acting out of concern for their lives and health but rather
to protect his own power, according to Yabloko opposition politician Boris
Vishnevsky (blog.newsru.com/article/25mar2020/net_putinu).
The Kremlin leader has repeatedly
shown that he isn’t concerned about the people in cases ranging from the Kursk,
Nord-Ost, Beslan, the Chechen war, the Georgian war, the Ukrainian war, the Syrian
war, and pension reform. But his
decision to postpone the voting on his constitutional amendments shows that he
does fear the people.
If the coronavirus were the only
problem on the horizon, Vishnevsky says, Putin would have had the April 22 vote
go ahead. “But the situation now is such that the combination of the epidemic,
quarantine measures, declining living standards, the falling ruble exchange
rate, inflation, and the threat of unemployment have put the results of this ‘voting”
in doubt.”
Indeed, attitudes about Putin are
changing to the negative so quickly that he might not get the majority he needs
to stay in power until 2036 no matter how many administrative measures he and
his minions might employ. That is why he
delayed the vote, not from any concern about the well-being of the Russian
people.
Lev Shlosberg, a Pskov opposition
deputy, and Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition commentator, make a similar argument. Shlosberg
suggests says that with his speech, Putin was “struggling not with the coronavirus
but with his falling rating” and clearly hasn’t figured out what to do other
than use PR (blog.newsru.com/article/25mar2020/putin_virus).
And Gudkov for his part says that
Putin’s choices are limited because he has lied to the people so often that no
one is going to trust him “for a minute” during this crisis whatever he says
and whatever he promises. They’ve finally learned their lesson, he argues (blog.newsru.com/article/25mar2020/obman).
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