Exit polls showed that Russians voted overwhelmingly to pass the package of amendments to the constitution on July 1st. Here is an excerpt from a report from RT‘s Bryan MacDonald:
The main takeaway from Russia’s ‘national vote’ on a series of amendments to the constitution is one a lot of people won’t want to hear: Most Russians want the country to plow its own furrow, regardless of what outsiders think.
In the end, the margin was huge. Exit polls suggested around 70 percent of voters had said ‘yes’ to 206 amendments to their constitution, with close to 30 percent rejecting the changes. Official results eventually put the ‘yes’ vote at over 77 percent.
Even liberal political organizers in Moscow conceded their own exit polls showed support in the capital for Vladimir Putin’s proposals. What’s more, those tallies revealed a majority of voters in numerous Moscow districts usually favorable to the opposition had backed the winning side.
One thing forgotten in almost all Western speculation about the process (erroneously labeled a ‘referendum’ by some US/UK pundits) was that it wasn’t strictly necessary at all. The backing Putin obtained in spring from the Duma (parliament), the Constitutional Court, and all 85 federal subjects technically sufficed. However, the president decided to stage a ‘confirmatory plebiscite’ to obtain broad public legitimacy. Thus, the vote itself was mostly about establishing whether Putin still has a popular mandate to uphold his domination of Russian politics.
Voting in Russia began on Friday and will conclude Wednesday on a referendum over a series of constitutional changes that would enhance the powers of the presidency, including, most controversially, allowing President Vladimir Putin to potentially remain in office for 12 more years beyond the end of his term limit in 2024.
There is more to the proposed changes, however, that bear looking at.
In mid-January, Putin announced his proposals during his annual address to the Federal Assembly. Several days later, he submitted the initial draft law to the Duma, Russia’s lower house.
The first few paragraphs reiterated some of the changes he outlined in his speech, including restrictions for individuals running for president of Russia and other major federal offices such as prime minister, cabinet members, parliamentarians, regional governors and judges.
These include candidates’ restrictions on dual citizenship and residency and, for the president, a requirement of continuous residency in Russia for at least 25 years. As others have pointed out, these rules effectively prohibit the children of the current political class from running for major office in Russia since most of them have studied and/or lived in the U.S. or Europe and have therefore had long-term residency in a foreign country.
Another amendment will require that Russia’s constitution take precedence over international law if the two are in conflict. Putin’s draft law stated:
To protect national sovereignty, it is proposed in the draft law that the decisions of interstate bodies based on the provisions of international treaties signed by the Russian Federation shall not be implemented in Russia if their interpretation contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
With respect to the expanded responsibilities of the parliament – consisting of the Federation Council (upper chamber) and the Duma (lower chamber) – the draft law summary states:
To make interaction between the representative and executive branches of power more effective, to strengthen the role of the State Duma and parliamentary parties, as well as to enhance the responsibility of members of the Government, it has been proposed that the Constitutional provisions on the procedure for appointing the Prime Minister and deputy prime ministers of Russia be amended to stipulate that candidates for these posts are appointed by the President following their approval by the State Duma.
Interestingly, there is some debate on what kind of qualitative change this represents. Professor Paul Robinson has looked at the full Russian draft submissions and made some comparisons between what the current constitutional language is and what it will be changed to. It appears to amount to a distinction without a difference:
“The words that I have emphasized in the quotation … clarify the situation: ‘the name of the candidate for prime minister will be submitted ‘to the State Duma by the President of the Russian Federation.’ In other words, everything will remain as it was, only now the Duma ‘confirms’ the candidate rather than gives its ‘consent’.”
A Presidential Republic
Putin emphasized in his January address, and reiterated in subsequent remarks, that though there may be room to expand some of the parliament’s authority, it is appropriate for Russia to remain a presidential republic and not a parliamentary republic:
“I think that Russia, with its vast territory, with many faiths, with a large number of nations, peoples, nationalities living in the country – you can’t even count, someone says 160, someone 190, you know, needs strong presidential power.”
The draft law also gives the Federation Council authority to investigate and remove judges for incompetence or corruption if the president recommends it:
“In addition, the Federation Council is to have the power to terminate the powers of judges of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Russia, the judges of the courts of cassation and appeal upon the recommendation of the President of Russia, if they are found guilty of acts that defame the honour and dignity of judges, as well as in other cases described in the federal legislation according to which the said persons can no longer perform their duties.”
Furthermore, the draft law allows the Constitutional Court to review proposed legislation for constitutionality prior to passage into law:
“The role of the Constitutional Court is to be strengthened by giving it the power to analyse, at the request of the President of Russia, compliance with the Constitution of laws adopted by the two houses of the Federal Assembly before they are signed by the President.”
As promised the draft law codifies that the state is responsible for providing basic social justice measures:
“To protect the social rights of citizens and ensure equal opportunities for them throughout the country, Article 75 of the Constitution is to be complemented with provisions setting forth the minimum wage in the amount not lower than the subsistence minimum of the economically active population throughout the country, guaranteeing the indexation of pensions, social benefits and other social payments, and setting out the basic principles of nationwide retirement benefits.”
Russia currently has a minimum wage but this will codify into the constitution that the minimum wage must be indexed to reflect the current minimum cost of living; in other words, it cannot be below the recognized poverty line.
The complete interview of Putin by TASS News Agency is now available on YouTube, broken own into clips by topic, with English subtitles. The playlist is available here:
This is the first clip on the list and each subsequent clip should automatically play after the other.
Many American pundits and politicians have referred to Vladimir Putin as a nationalist. This has always been a disingenuous characterization of the Russian president to anyone who has studied him carefully over the years. Putin is more what could be termed a sovereigntist. He believes unequivocally in national sovereignty and in Russia’s right to be an independent nation that freely makes its own decisions in its perceived interests – engaging in multilateralism when appropriate, but as a respected equal. This is not nationalism in the commonly understood meaning of the word, which connotes a form of national chauvinism – the idea that a country (or ethnic group) is superior to others and has the right to do what it wants at anyone else’s expense. I have never heard Putin say anything that suggests this kind of ideology, unless he’s being quoted out of context, which happens frequently in the western press. Moreover, there are real nationalist politicians in Russia, namely Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR Party and one of the more popular opposition politicians. One can get an idea of some of his more outlandish ideas here – including support for monarchy and denigrating diplomacy.
In an interview with Oliver Stone in June of 2019, Putin specifically gave his opinion of nationalism:
Vladimir Putin: In general nationalism is a sign of narrow-mindedness.
Within the context of domestic Russian politics, Putin is a moderate. He sees himself as a Russian patriot and pragmatist whose top priorities are the security and stability of Russia as well as improving Russians’ living standards. Anyone who has an understanding of Russian geography and history immediately comprehends these priorities and why they resonate with the Russian people, who overwhelmingly believe that Putin, whatever his flaws, took a country that was literally on the verge of being a failed state in 2000 and turned it around. In order to keep the country together after the disaster of the 1990s, it was necessary to foster social cohesion. Consequently, Putin encouraged the trend, already underway, of the re-discovery of Russia’s pre-Soviet cultural heritage, with the Orthodox Church playing a significant role and Russians’ cultural conservatism acknowledged. All this reflected the need to emphasize boundaries, rootedness and order in the search for stability after the chaotic Yeltsin era that plunged the nation into massive poverty, crime and its worst mortality crisis since World War II. There is also a strong sense of duty and loyalty that Putin personally values.
These qualities have made him attractive to some western conservatives, despite the fact that in many ways Putin is a statist as is fitting with Russia’s long political history, which does not include the libertarianism that a large segment of American conservatives have traditionally embraced. Conversely, Putin’s cultural conservatism has been weaponized by liberal Democrats, especially as it pertains to gay rights. Ironically, this obscures the fact that Putin’s actual record shows a leader with a more nuanced and moderate socio-political view as he’s overseen the expansion of individual rights for Russians within the justice system and opposes re-institution of the death penalty. Meanwhile Russian women enjoy maternity and child benefits that American women could only dream of.
In an interview with Rossiya 1 on May 17th, Putin stated that Russia – a country straddling two continents and 11 time zones – was more its own civilization than just a country.
