Icheoku does not care a hoot whether or not Vladimir Putin is the best thing to ever happen to Russia after the invention of vodka; but for the former president and current prime minister to stage a comeback to the Kremlin as president is not one such aah moment for any impartial observer. It is rather a political revolving door from which nothing progressive ever emerges as an old leader is recycled yet again and in Russia. Such recycling of leaders is a common happenstance in third world countries but not in a country that supposedly prides itself as a top tier country in the world. A Russia that wants to be taken seriously and accorded its rightful place among the comity of nations should not so micro-manage its leadership that a single man should dictate its policies for twenty odd years, the expected future two term of Putin considered in addition to the previous eight. Evolution is good for virtually everything including the running of any government, otherwise ideas and polices become stale and stagnated and so does the polity itself leading to dictatorship. Simply put in another way, what is developing in Russia with the reported second coming of Vladimir Putin is a dictatorship glorified, pure and simple. So Icheoku asks, where is NATO on this development or are they waiting first for a Tsarist Spring to ensue before they do something to discourage or dissuade Putin with his planned return to Kremlin?
Why Putin and what does he wants to prove this time around with his second coming to Kremlin, assuming he ever left. Is Putin trying to say to the rest of the world that no one else in Russia can preside over mother Russia absent his petite self and you ask yourself was there no Russia before he was born and would Russia screech to a halt when he takes his final bow out from this earth. Icheoku does not get it nor does it want to get it that a country of more than 140 million should be so hypnotized by just one man as to willingly permit his playing ping-pong with their presidency and in a democracy; except that former President Mikhail Gorbachev had warned previously that what obtains in Russia is not a democracy strictly called but a form of power ping-pong between Vladimir Putin and whoever he picks as a sparring partner. How can a country so big and potential so untapped be taken hostage by just one man as to do with it whatever he pleases and the days of the Tczars was supposed to be since over? Why are those governments which accused former President Mubarak of Egypt of metamorphosing into a Pharaoh not by the same token raise some curiosity of a Czar Putin in the making or is it a case of some animals being more equal than the others? It is stupendously complicated and incapable of any meaning or rational understanding.
When the world thought that Russia was turning the corner with the election of a lawyer president and that it would be a progressive onward march hence, here comes marching back to the center-stage of Kremlin policy making, a security operative, steeped in the old cold war mentality and you wonder for what purpose? The world had gone through a lot of transition since the last time Putin was president including reduced tension in most of the world's hot spots; China has also become a strong emerging power fiercely nudging the United States of America and is content to occupy the number two spot and would not play any second place to either Russia or incoming Putin. So what is gained by a Vladimir Putin heralded return and second coming into Russia presidency, which he never really vacated but bidded his time as his boy Medvedev completed his assigned mandate or should Icheoku say held the fort while the boss waited on the sidelines. All those projection of power argument is nonsense and so also are those bare-chest display of a macho man on a horse-back as the world has since moved on from the era of Putin and it is not ready to slow down now for Putin to play a catch up.
But it is not just Icheoku, how would Putin himself even feel coming back this time to meet with an entirely different generation of world leaders who have happened on the stage since the last time Putin was there? How would he feel to be seen as a "grandfather world leader" since all those other world leaders he earlier played the scene with have all retired now and enjoying their retirement from the world stage; and here he comes marching back to start learning all over how to schmooze and play with these new generation world leaders. Icheoku says it is akin to a student who refuses or never graduates from college and goes through matriculation each time with freshmen, while his colleagues whom he initially enrolled with have all graduated and moved on to some other ventures in life.
Icheoku says to Russians, your understandable love for Putin notwithstanding, his reemergence in the Kremlin is retrogressive and not what a forward-looking Russia needs at this time. Icheoku have nothing personally against Putin and admires his records; but says that since his reemergence brings nothing new to the table and is rather a distraction from a pure democratic march forward, it could and should have been avoided. At best he could have remained the man behind the scene calling the shots as a prime minister or the acknowledged boss of Russian politics and security.
In making his intention known, Putin said, "I want to say directly: Medvedev and I reached an agreement between ourselves long ago, several years ago, on what to do in the future, on who should do what. But both I and Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev believe that this is far from being the most important thing -- who will do what, who will sit in what place. What is far more important is something else: how we will all work, what results we achieve, and what the citizens of our country think of this." Icheoku says what an arrogant and arrant nonsense of a statement for Putin to make as if himself and Medvedev owns Russia or are the only competent and capable Russians in a country of more than 140 million people to decide for Russians who shall occupy what position in their governance. The last time Icheoku checked Russia does not have a "Plc" or "Llc" or "Inc" as a suffix after its name and you wonder how a country which is not a public company could be run as one and by a man who sees himself as both a director and shareholder of "Russia Plc" with unlimited powers to decide who becomes its president and/or prime minister?
The two Russian wise-men are trading places, with each taking over from one another just like a swap-meet; and you wonder what kind of democracy Russia really practices. It is a democracy-disgrace that such an arbitrary trade of offices between this two men of little stature and especially the return of a recycled Putin could be tolerated in 2011 Russia; yet Russia is not a third world country? Icheoku says every Russian should be ashamed of what their republic has become - a little polity that could be easily hijacked by a Putin, whose ego is such that you would think he is ten feet taller than all Russians and that makes him the only thing mother Russia ever desires and deserves. A time like this surely calls for an Arab-styled Tczarist Spring in Russia to usher in a much needed and long overdue rebirth of the polity or did Bolshevik revolution not take place in the old Soviet Union including the present Russian for crying out loud.
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