A referendum announced by Vladimir Putin

To depict the issues at stake in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election, political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin uses an unexpected image: One recalls the parade of athletes in immaculate costumes who paraded in front of Stalin on Red Square in Moscow. There are thousands of them, but if only one has a portrait of the leader, the sanctity of the event is contaminated. »

In other words, more than a democratic exercise used to appoint or legitimize those who rule, elections are more than ever a simple symbolic ritual, a moment of collective celebration. And for Vladimir Putin, in power since 2000, seeking a new mandate to take him through to 2030 is a show of force.

The advantage of the image used by Mr. Orechkin, who was a senior official of the Central Election Commission between 1995 and 2007 and now lives in exile in Europe, is that it applies to both candidates and candidates. To Voters: All are called. walk in one step.

Two candidates with anti-war rhetoric, Ekaterina Dontsova and Boris Nadezhdin, who had sparked a wave of enthusiasm, were dropped from the race citing errors in their application files. And those who were allowed to compete – the nationalist Leonid Slutsky, the communist Nikolai Kharitonov and the businessman Vladislav Davankov, who were to capture a part of the liberal vote – no one M. Didn’t even pretend to want to compete with Putin, or express the slightest criticism. against its policies.

“Even if these candidates are completely loyal, the simple possibility of a protest vote is unacceptable., Mr. Orechkine believes. They cannot score more than 10%. » The political scientist recalled Pavel Groudinin, the previous Communist Party candidate in the 2018 presidential election, who won about 12% of the vote after a flamboyant campaign. In the wake of the election, Mr. Groudine lost his shares in a large agricultural firm, his local mandates and disappeared from public life.

The only suspense of this 2024 edition is whether the incumbent, Vladimir Putin, will score higher or lower than 80%. This figure was quoted by online media in the fall of 2023 Medusa As a designated target for Kremlin strategists. It is the one adopted by almost all observers, who note that the score attributed to Mr. Putin can only be higher than in 2018, when he received 77.53% of the vote.

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