8, December 2023
Moscow: Putin announces presidential candidacy in 2024 elections 0
Vladimir Putin on Friday moved to prolong his grip on Russia for at least another six years, announcing his candidacy in the presidential election next March that he is all but certain to win.
Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting an immensely costly war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his countrymen’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia – including one on the Kremlin itself – and corroded its aura of invincibility.
A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be losing his grip, but he emerged with no permanent scars.
Putin announced his decision to run in the March 17 presidential election after a Kremlin award ceremony, when war veterans and others pleaded with him to seek re-election.
“I won’t hide it from you – I had various thoughts about it over time, but now, you’re right, it’s necessary to make a decision,” Putin said in a video released by the Kremlin after the event. “I will run for president of the Russian Federation.”
Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center noted that the announcement was made in a low-key way instead of a live televised speech, probably reflecting the Kremlin’s spin effort to emphasize Putin’s modesty and his perceived focus on doing his job as opposed to loud campaigning.
“It’s not about prosperity, it’s about survival,” Stanovaya observed. “The stakes have been raised to the maximum.”
About 80% of the populace approves of Putin’s performance, according to the independent pollster Levada Center. That support might come from the heart or it might reflect submission to a leader whose crackdown on any opposition has made even relatively mild criticism perilous.
Whether due to real or coerced support, Putin is expected to face only token opposition on the ballot.
Putin, 71, has twice used his leverage to amend the constitution so he could theoretically stay in power until he’s in his mid-80s. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.
In 2008, he stepped aside to become prime minister due to term limits but continued calling the shots. Presidential terms were then extended to six years from four, while another package of amendments he pushed through three years ago reset the count for two consecutive terms to begin in 2024.
“He is afraid to give up power,” Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst and professor at Free University of Riga, Latvia, told The Associated Press this year.
At the time of the amendments that allowed him two more terms, Putin’s concern about losing power may have been elevated: Levada polling showed his approval rating significantly lower, hovering around 60%.
In the view of some analysts, that dip in popularity could have been a main driver of the war that Putin launched in Ukraine in February 2022.
“This conflict with Ukraine was necessary as a glue. He needed to consolidate his power,” said commentator Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter now living in Israel.
Brookings Institution scholar Fiona Hill, a former U.S. National Security Council expert on Russian affairs, agrees that Putin thought “a lovely small, victorious war” would consolidate support for his reelection.
“Ukraine would capitulate,” she told AP this year. “He’d install a new president in Ukraine. He would declare himself the president of a new union of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia over the course of the time leading up to the 2024 election. He’d be the supreme leader.”
The war didn’t turn out that way. It devolved into a grueling slog in which neither side makes significant headway, posing severe challenges to the rising prosperity integral to Putin’s popularity and Russians’ propensity to set aside concerns about corrupt politics and shrinking tolerance of dissent.
Putin’s rule has spanned five U.S. presidencies, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden. He became acting president on New Year’s Eve in 1999, when Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. He was elected to his first term in March 2000.
When he was forced to step down in 2008 by term limits, he shifted to the prime minister’s post while close ally Dmitry Medvedev served as a placeholder president.
When Putin announced he would run for a new term in 2012 and Medvedev submissively agreed to become prime minister, public protests brought out crowds of 100,000 or more.
Although Putin has long abandoned the macho photo shoots of bear hunting and scuba diving that once amused and impressed the world, he shows little sign of slowing down. Photos from 2022 of him with a bloated face and a hunched posture led to speculation he was seriously ill, but he seems little changed in recent public appearances.
“He’s a wartime president, is mobilizing the population behind him,” Hill said. “And that will be the message around the 2024 election, depending on where things are in the battlefield.”
Source: AP
20, December 2023
Congo-Kinshasa: Polls open in high-stakes election after fraught campaign 0
Polling stations opened Wednesday in a high-stakes Democratic Republic of Congo general election pitting the incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi against a fragmented opposition, as much of the east of the country is mired in conflict.
Polling stations opened in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country at 6 am (0400 GMT) and will close at 5 pm local time.
AFP journalists saw the first voter casting his ballot at a polling station in the eastern city of Kisangani, which sits in a region an hour ahead of the rest of the huge country, which straddles two time zones.
Voters still waiting in line at 5 pm will be given tokens and polling booths will stay open until they cast their votes, an official at the electoral commission told AFP.
The government declared a bank holiday for Wednesday, and as during previous elections, it closed the borders and suspended domestic flights.
Around 44 million Congolese, in a nation of 100 million, are registered to choose their president as well as lawmakers in national and provincial assemblies, and local councillors.
In a first, Congolese citizens residing in South Africa, Belgium, the United States and France will also cast ballots.
More than 100,000 candidates are running for various positions, and while counting is set to begin as soon as polling stations close, results are not expected to be announced for several days.
Several observation missions will be watching the voting process, with the largest one run by a union of Catholic and Protestant churches mobilising 25,000 election observers.
Leaders of this influential mission promised Tuesday to conduct a “parallel count” for the presidential election.
‘Foreign candidates’
Tshisekedi, 60, faces 18 challengers.
The incumbent, who took office in 2019 and is running for a second five-year term, is considered the front-runner to win in the single-round presidential vote.
Tshisekedi’s record, as he himself has acknowledged, is mixed. He has presided over years of economic growth but little job creation and soaring inflation. He is asking for another term to “consolidate his gains”.
Throughout the campaign, he also poured scorn on what he termed “foreign candidates” – suggesting that his opponents have dual loyalties and lack the will to stand up to Rwanda, which the DRC accuses of funding rebel groups on its soil.
Moise Katumbi, a 58-year-old businessman and former governor of mineral-rich Katanga province, is the main target of such attacks.
Armed conflict in eastern DRC overshadowed much of the electoral campaign. Militias have plagued the troubled region for decades, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
Tensions have resumed since the M23 group, which is allegedly backed by Rwanda, began capturing swathes of territory in late 2021.
Clashes with M23 fighters have subsided in recent weeks but the rebels continue to hold sway over large parts of North Kivu province. Citizens living in those areas will not be able to vote.
Other presidential candidates include Martin Fayulu, a 67-year-old former oil executive who says he was the true winner of the 2018 election that brought Tshisekedi to power.
Surgical gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, 68, who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping rape victims, is also running.
All the major opposition candidates say they suspect the government of preparing electoral fraud.
Flory Tshimanga, a 32-year-old seller of mobile phone credits in Kinshasa, said he thought the vote would proceed without hiccups.
“It’s when the results come in that there could be problems,” he said.
Source: AFP