Vladimir Putin becomes Russia's president for life

[aum]

Thanks to an overwhelming vote of confidence from about three-fourths of the Russian electorate, Vladimir Putin now can remain president of Russia until 2036. He will be 84 years old when he completes the second of the two additional six-year terms that Russian voters awarded him in a referendum that ended on June 30. The referendum’s final results are not yet all in, but its outcome is not in doubt. 

 

The referendum that guaranteed Putin’s tenure — assuming he remains the picture of health that he constantly demonstrates before those who are adoring supporters — actually addressed 205 amendments to the Russian constitution apart from the question of his extended tenure. Among these were popular ones such marriage as a heterosexual union, indexation guarantees for pensions and a variety of other social benefits. The tenure proposal was buried among the plethora of amendments, rendering it almost impossible for Putin’s extension to be rejected. 

 

By 2036, Putin will have outlasted at least three American presidents, and a minimum of four if Donald Trump is not re-elected this year. His time in office — if one includes his four years as prime minister, when he was the real power behind then-president Dmitry Medvedev — will total nearly 37 years. That extended tenure would render him the longest-serving Russian (or Soviet) leader since Peter the Great, whose portrait graces Putin’s Kremlin office.

 

Putin’s publicly stated goal is to restore Russian greatness to at least that of the Soviet era. While he does not have the ideological impulses that spurred Lenin, Stalin, and their successors, Putin shares the same geopolitical concerns that motivated all of his Communist and Czarist predecessors. He also has lifted the tactics that were central to the Soviet playbook. As American diplomat George Kennan observed in his “Long Telegram from Moscow” on Feb. 22, 1946, at the outset of what became the Cold War: 

 

“At bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. … Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form. … Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies. … For this reason [Russia’s rulers] have always feared foreign penetration. … Russians will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending … power, or of inhibiting or diluting power of others. … Efforts will be made … to disrupt [Western] national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity. … Poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents.”

 

It all seems sickeningly familiar. 

 

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[cosy]

AH§

That was expected after the results of the referendum

It is a shame, some believe, they are the only rulers who can do or represent the people.

I don't blame the other dictators if they pick this as an example

The only irony out of this, they never deliver at all

[truemate]

putin have two secret daughters

never knew that.....