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Editorial Commentary
The New York Times:
Tale of Two Strongmen
Editorial
Voters on Sunday gave a split decision to two of the world’s most prominent and problematic authoritarian leaders. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, turned a parliamentary election into a referendum on himself and cynically manipulated a huge victory, undermining what was left of the independence of the Duma and Russian politics. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez’s latest and most outrageous power grab was rejected at the ballot box, offering hope that political competition there will now flourish.
Mr. Putin’s sales pitch in his phony parliamentary election was that he had brought Russia stability and global respect. A huge number of voters — grateful for the bounty of Russia’s oil wealth — bought it and looked the other way when Mr. Putin jailed his opponents and crushed their access to the media.Nobody knows what Mr. Putin, whose second four-year term ends in March, now has in mind. One possibility is that he will use the same dirty tricks to ensure the election of a weak president and then come back as prime minister. But as Mr. Putin well knows, power corrupts and even a handpicked successor may not be that compliant. So he may now try to rewrite the Constitution so that he can run for a third term. Either ploy would do even more damage to Russia’s battered democracy.
Since taking office eight years ago, President Chávez has grabbed ever more power, using his nation’s oil wealth to buy up popular support. But he went too far pushing for constitutional reforms that would have given him control over nearly every major political institution, as well as the option to stand for re-election as often as he wanted. Mr. Chávez is still very powerful, and he has made clear that he considers the setback only temporary. To his credit, he quickly accepted the results.
Who would have ever thought that Mr. Chávez could seem more palatable than Mr. Putin, who has the stamp of international respectability as a member of the group of leading industrialized nations? The United States and Europe must let Mr. Putin know that his days of respectability are fast running out.
The international community will also have to keep up the pressure on Mr. Chávez, who clearly hasn’t suddenly become a democrat. The defeat of his reform package does show what can happen when a divided opposition unites and voters choose the rule of law over the whims of a strongman. Russia’s voters should take a good look at what went right in Venezuela and what’s going so badly wrong in their own country
The New York Times is one of the world's most important newspaper Petroleumworld not necessarily share these views.Editor's note: This commentary was originally published by The New York Times,
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Petroleumworld News 12/04/07
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