Vladimir Putin - friend or foe

The Putin dillema is that the former incumbent Russian president today has remained to be the most strong successful symbol of stability for many Russians : a national logotype that can ensure political longevity for any political program, even being the most helpless and unviable. The May celebrations in Russia indicated a revival of great consolidation and patriotism among common people over a victory in world war 2 who professed nostalgia for the former USSR and who think the Russia should be by any means a great powerful country again. Ruling over Russia as a Prime Minister the key element in Putin's increasing authoritarianism is his reliance upon the militia, military and, to an even greater extent, upon Russia's internal security affaires – FSB the analog of secret police of the Communist era. It might be said that today the activity of Russia's democratic institutions is dismissed as a farce, while the alleged course toward suppression of freedom and human rights is perceived as an official policy priority while power continues to concentrate in the hands of Mr Putin himself. The key sources of politics are in Russia's patriachial mentality, which unfortunately is inacceptable to understand the western system of values and ideas of freedom and democracy imperial thinking that put Russia in the centre of all Slavic world”, combining with corruption, violence, human rights violation, and disingenuous, sophisticated propaganda that were used by the party, the KGB, and the military. There certainly has been evidence of diminishing democracy since 1993 (including the use of tanks against parliament), however, it has only recently received such a critical attention among foreign and American observers. For the most part Russia follows the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which this country is a signatory member. On paper, Russia's human rights law is actually quite good. There is inscribled in Russian Constitution law as an example that the Russian Federation – Russia is a democratic federal law-governed state with the republican form of a government and an article 2 of Constitution of Russia Federation sygnifies : “Man, his rights and liberties are the supreme value of the state. It shall be a duty of the state to recognize, respect and protect the rights and liberties of man and citizen”. Unfortunately, the lofty ideals embodied in many of the instruments to which Russia has acceded remain to have been on paper. Thus, Russia fell 20 places - from 88th to 108th - in the "protection of property rights" category, making it among the worst out of 117 countries in the survey. Russia also fell from 84th to 102th in "judicial independence" and from 85th to 106th in "favoritism in decisions of government officials." Although the Yukos takeover was the first positive step of the state towards renationalisation of energy resourses, to the big profit of certain closely connected Russian though to the detriment of foreign interests. Russia has remained to be among the oil reachest countries of the world. In his recent television address to Russian people, Putin said that the country while being engulfed in the finantial crisis has been growing at an average of 7 percent per year. This is a good indicator of stability for Russia oil-based economy. Experts believe, that Russia's oil-driven economic growth further would be even higher with the proper institutional reforms, possibly reaching 7 percent annually even while being in the epoch of world financial crisis. The second point is that with Moscow leading the way, Russia is now dramatically reversing a decade-long drop in its national birthrate. Statistics shows that not only were 122.750 more birth registered in 2007 than in 2006, but the number of children boorn cast year was the highest since 1991. Officials attributed the turning birth tide due to new policies and increased economic stability in Russia. It probably has to do with improvements in living standards and economic growth. On the other positive side, the analysts praised the establishment of the Russian stabilization fund as a bulwark against a potential drop in the world price of oil. This important initiative of Russian government is arguably the most important example of economic legislation in Russia which surely would be approved in the following six presidential years.

Vladimir Putin - friend or foe - commentaires

Vladimir Putin - friend or foe