In countries like Russia, there are many intrigues in politics and the way government offices are run. Most if not all positions of government are dictated by the president and his cronies and in cases you will find out that people are groomed to take over those positions. This move it is said has made the country to be termed as nominally democratic whereby it still holds democratic elections but in the real sense decisions are made by the president. Under president Putin, he has formed what people term as the Kremlin Inc a situation which expresses the fact that government business is run like a business. According to Myers, Putin has created capitalism with an authoritarian face. The search for his replacement has started to look like less of a political campaign and more like a boardroom struggle to select a new C.E.O. (2007). This happens in all corporations where a manager will be discussed and the one chosen will have characters of the predecessor. Law is therefore imposed in this kind of authoritarian rule.
Even as Russia has had a long history of transferring of power either by hereditary and most recently through non hereditary means, the president has shown that by choosing a few people to be the preferred candidates to replace him after his constitutional term is over, authoritarian rule is practiced in the country. It is known that even Putin himself was handpicked to become the next candidate and president of Russia by the then president Boris N. Yelsin. He was selected from secret service and was untested. Due to the powers vested on him, he became the president in the year 2000. Sergei B. Ivanov and Dmitri Medvedev are those who were touted as the most likely of candidates to replace Putin because they were his hardliners and also it was evident based on the how they were promoted to higher government roles. It is also documented that the bid to replace the presidency that was also known as operation successor, started in earnest in November 2005, when the Kremlin announced that Putin had given promotions to two of his closest aides, Sergei Ivanov and Dmitri Medvedev (Myer, 2007). Medvedev was promoted to deputy prime minister and it was widely seen as a way to prepare him to the position of the highest office in the land.
Prominent businessmen that seemed influential and political challengers were sent into exile or to jail altogether, the governors offices from the provinces were also interfered with by Putin with a view to consolidate his powers. His hard-liners, who were called the siviloki or in other words people of power, had to establish their close and personal relationship with Putin himself who was the ultimate in power. Their loyalty must have to be seen as unwavering. A case in point is the unwavering support the governor of St. Petersburg, Valentina I. Matviyenko had for Putin by publicly denouncing the electoral politics and also by saying Russians were not ready for experiments with electoral democracy. The mentality of the Russian demands a lord, a czar, a president (Myer, 2007). Putin and his cronies were enabled to be that powerful through the media.
From the article we read the way president Putin was able to control many centers of power including the bringing back the television networks under state control. He was therefore able to effectively communicate with the people and at the same time spreading insightful messages about his detractors. There is nothing that his successors did and went unnoticed as they would appear in all the state media even though it was inconsequential. Ivanov was present at the armys holiday concert and in as much as it seemed not some important news they were broadcasted on state television all the same. National projects in the country were expressed highly by the media and especially when Dmitri Medvedev made a tour to inspect how the government projects were carrying on. They were highly praised as being successful. The state media too was used as a tool for tainting a bad image to those people who were opposing Putins plans especially the ones to do with democracy and the right to vie for office.
Announcing ones candidacy is, in fact, tantamount to declaring ones open opposition to the Kremlin, to the smooth transition of power, to Putin himself (Myer, 2007). For Mikhail M. Kasyanov, it was such propaganda as arranging the privatization of a house along the Moscow River while in the case for Alexandr V. Donskoi, he was suggested to have faked diploma papers while vying for office as mayor. The media did a lot of scrutiny for the candidates who were opposing transition of power to selected candidates and so did the prosecutors who opened cases for them. Little information about the opposing candidates was allowed to be broadcasted as journalists would be discouraged to attending their conferences. They were threatened all the time and even physical threats took place too. Putin on the other hand received a lot of praise from the media fraternity, and so did his cronies too. They were not criticized and more often both Ivanov and Medvedev appeared on television. Any criticism such as the pardon of Ivanovs son who killed a pedestrian was avoided in the strongest way possible.
In conclusion, Russia is a country that is ruled using authoritarian rule because as I have indicated, most if not all of the government positions are given to people already selected and not in the democratic way of electing leaders. It is true that this happened to Putin and to his predecessor as well, Medvedev. The same happens to other powerful wielding offices in companies where interests by the powerful few are safeguarded by electing their partners. I have also written on the way state resources are used to fight the people who oppose the system of government and what consequences they face when they announce their candidacy.
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