Wings clipped

Elections,even in Russia and even for Vladimir Valdimirovich Putin,can be particularly harmful for hubris. Just two months ago,he announced he was planning a comeback to Kremlin and standing for the March 2012 presidential elections — thereby reducing his four years as prime minister to a convenient interlude while waiting out his protege’s tenure as president to honour the constitutional ban on anyone holding three consecutive terms as president. It was all playing out to script. Now Putin has been served a reality check. In the parliamentary elections,Putin’s party,United Russia,has won 50 per cent votes,a sharp fall from the 64 per cent it got in 2007.

Anywhere else in the democratic world,this would be a comfortable majority,but in Moscow,this means a couple of other things — in real terms,United Russia no longer has the two-thirds majority in Duma it needs to amend the constitution at will; symbolically,it is a blow to the Putin-Medvedev tandem in Moscow that both have taken for granted,and the success of which Putin believed could see him stay on in power even till 2024. If this is a turnaround,then it has happened in spite of the powers-that-be doing everything possible,legitimately and allegedly otherwise,to quell all dissent. United Russia faced little opposition during the election since many liberal parties had already been barred from even registering. It can now corral the support of parties like A Just Russia with similar political stakes and form an easily manageable coalition. However,more damning are allegations of widespread rigging — the Internet is swarming with videos of ballot boxes being stuffed,and downtown Moscow with thousands protesting against rigging and raising anti-Putin slogans.

It is too early to say how the tide will turn three months later in March — Putin’s popularity may have fallen but is still rather substantial and Russia’s electoral system is stacked in favour of the incumbent. And it will be too abrupt to spot in the crowd of protesters a possible Moscow Spring,the symbolic cachet of it falling on the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union notwithstanding. Even so,only the politically naive would shrug off the significance of this election results. And Putin,Russia’s most famous judoka,should know a blow when he sees it coming.