Why Putin's popularity is dropping

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Why Putin's popularity is dropping
By Ajay Goyal
July 16, 2004 Posted: 15:49 Moscow time (11:49 GMT)


President Vladimir Putin is not going to run for re-election in 2008, and it probably matters little what his popularity ratings are. Putin's ratings have dropped nearly 30 percent in the past three months. But, then, Boris Yeltsin had approval ratings of around 2 percent when he installed Putin to run Russia. Within weeks, the state-controlled media helped develop a near-80 percent approval rating for a man Russia barely knew.

The political handlers who have managed two presidential and two Duma victories in the past five years for Putin, along with a number of gubernatorial elections that have been grilled to taste, have some reason to be confident that the person Putin chooses will be elected as his successor to the Russian presidency.

There is no serious challenge from the left or right to the centrist political class that is ruling Russia. A blend of business representatives, bureaucrats and members of the security services, the Russian ruling elite is largely devoid of ideology and driven by clannish interests and personal agendas. National interests are taking a backseat despite all the rhetoric from Putin.

It could be said that there are no genuine mainstream politicians in the country at all. The opposition to Putin is all seated around a handful of TV talk shows, and pulling those shows off the air effectively ends their ambitions and political carriers.

One would think that it would be easy to throw a political challenge at Putin, given the ever-growing list of failings of the president and his administration. The only serious challenge came when Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners tried to elbow their way into the State Duma and install their executives into key positions in the government. Putin preempted those moves, but that does not prevent the Russian oligarchs from scheming for regime change or implementing regime-management tactics in more subtle manners...cont'd

http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=44687