Third term story gathers momentum

It's hard to say whether the country's leadership has figured out who it wants to be in the driver's seat after 2008, but last week's proposals from a couple of regional legislators to allow Putin to stay in office - covered extensively in this space - have certainly got the media talking. Tuesday's Moscow Times had a front-page story titled, "Signs of a 3rd Term Campaign."

A behind-the-scenes campaign appears to be revving up to make sure that Putin remains in office beyond 2008. As the clock slowly ticks down on Putin's final term, the chorus of support for a constitutional amendment could swell and help Putin's retinue to persuade the president that he should stay on, political analysts said. [...]

Putin has repeatedly spoken against amending the Constitution, but his most recent remarks could be interpreted as slightly more ambiguous, said Andrei Piontkovsky, an independent political analyst.

"It's another step in Putin's comments on the subject. This was the first time that the option was first mentioned in a positive context," he said.

"There has been strong pressure on Putin from his entourage to run for a third term, but he has strong hesitations," he said. "He understands the costs on an international level."

If Putin were to run under an amended Constitution, he would risk being likened to Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Uzbek President Islam Karimov, longtime leaders who have traded angry words with the West over democracy in their countries and the legitimacy of their regimes, Piontkovsky said.

Piontkovsky said the recent proposals appeared to have been orchestrated by the siloviki, a group of military and security officials who rode to power on Putin's coattails and want him to stay on.

But Dmitry Orlov, the director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, a think tank, said the regional legislators probably reacted to Putin's statements in Finland on their own. "They wished to reiterate their loyalty," he said.

Novye Izvestiia had an article which echoed that last thought (I haven't translated it yet, although I will if I have time tomorrow). The money quote in the article was from Vladimir Lysenko, President of the Institute of Modern Politics:

"These small-minded brown-nosers don't miss a single opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the leadership."

But the NI piece also allowed that there might be other forces working to "rev up" the third-term bandwagon.