Time for Putin 2.0
via Financial Times - Editorial on 2/14/12
The task facing Russia can be summed up in one word – heard often from the current president but rarely the prime minister himself: modernisation
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February 14, 2012 7:01 pm
Time for Putin 2.0
Vladimir Putin has spent thousands of words in Russian newspapers setting out a manifesto ahead of the presidential poll next month that, despite the protests against him, he is still all but certain to win. Yet the task facing Russia can be summed up in one word – heard often, though with little real effect, from the country’s current president but more rarely from Mr Putin himself: modernisation.
Modernisation requires far more than overhauling Russia’s creaking, resource-dominated economy. It means, above all else, replacing the arbitrary and often corrupt rule of the Kremlin and local bureaucracies with the rule of law, reinforced by the checks and balances of a modern democracy. Russia faces numerous handicaps in making that transition – in its history, its culture, its mind-boggling vastness. But with nominal output per capita topping $13,000 last year, it is at the level where many other countries have achieved it.
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Steering the country to this point is, for all the repellent aspects of his system, Mr Putin’s undoubted achievement. “Putin 2.0” must move to the next stage. Russia needs an independent, well-trained judiciary; a functioning, competitive parliament; and free media. These, in turn, could boost protection of property rights and begin to combat corruption. That could encourage foreign investment and help small businesses, outside the extractive industries, to start to flourish. In economic policy, Mr Putin would be well advised to adopt the detailed “Strategy 2020” plan drawn up at his request by experts last year.
The prime minister’s articles contain elements of such a programme. But similar promises have been made before. The pressure revealed on Tuesday on Ekho Moskvy, the admirably independent radio station, is more reason to doubt his sincerity. The risk is Mr Putin again ducks the big reform challenges and goes for the ostensibly easier option. This would include some political liberalisation to appease the restive middle class, plus high-spending populism to retain the loyalty of his more working-class and rural “base”. With an already bloated budget, Russia cannot afford such largesse.
Real reforms will be tough, and potentially unpopular. But Mr Putin should expend his remaining political capital on setting them in train. He should, too, allow new leaders to emerge, both within and outside the Kremlin system, able to take up the challenge. He conducted an essentially sham handover of power in 2008; now he must begin preparing to do so for real.
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