Posted on 12/29/2017 6:50:42 AM PST by nuconvert
Pretty sure it’s her head scarf.
Putin will send Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev into retirement, either just before or just after the election. Medvedev will be replaced by either a liberal-technocrat such as former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin or Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina.
Alternatively, he might be replaced with a “get out to vote” patriot such as Sergei Glazyev or FSB Major General Georgy Rogozin. Or someone – anyone – who is completely neutral. But, I believe, some indecisive individual whom Putin can manipulate at will actually be installed in Medvedev’s stead
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/maybe-russia-will-completely-change-in-2018-60046
Navalny, who has attracted a broad following across Russia by campaigning against corruption, was banned on the basis of trumped-up fraud charges that the European Court of Human Rights ruled invalid.
His real offenses were helping to lead opposition to Putin’s last reelection, in 2012; producing videos documenting Kremlin criminality, such as the more than $1 billion in property amassed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev; and bringing out tens of thousands of followers in cities across Russia this year to denounce the regime.
Navalny was credited with 27 percent of the vote when he ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013, and his presentation of his case against Medvedev had been viewed 25.7 million times on YouTube as of Tuesday. Still, the conventional political wisdom in Moscow holds that Putin could easily best Navalny in the presidential election, bolstering both his international and domestic credibility.
The Russian Parliament, the Duma, is a rubber stamp legislature. Putin will be in power until he is unable to control the system.
Here is a translation of a Russian article https://snob.ru/selected/entry/132213
The contrast with Soviet times is instruction, Krasheninnikov says. The USSR fell apart when the CPSU ceased to be a constitutionally defined power vertical. The soviets were simply “a fiction,” with real power in the party and its nomenklatura control. “This was the true power vertical in the USSR.”
And it was far more important in ensuring stability and the transfer of power than the loyalty of the security agencies or anything else because everyone looked to the party hierarchy with the Politburo at the top and knew that it could and would take decisions and then impose them on the country.
“Now,” the analyst continues, “the situation is much more unstable. With the exception of the president, all those organs of power which run the country according to the Constitution are de facto fictions.” The most important decisions are taken by the president and an informal grouping of people around him that is nowhere defined by law and the constitution.
Consequently, in the Putin system, “there is no single ‘party of power’ or even more a Politburo known to all. Instead, there is an indefinite circle of trusted people who are close that is formed exclusively on the principles of long-standing friendship, common fate, family ties, similarities and other informal characteristics, among which chance plays a key role.”
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.se/2017/12/putin-regime-less-stable-than-soviet.html
Yes, but several hundred years ago ;-)
A lot of conflicting info from Iran now. Arab countries are as well filling in a lot of deza. It is difficult to get a good picture of what is happening. The most reliable public info is this https://twitter.com/bbcpersian
People are chanting “Reza Shah we are sorry”, in Qom of all places
It is very bad, and it was probably the main reason for the protests that started a few days ago by the hardliners. They wanted to get rid of the Rouhani administration. But now the situation is out of their control. More on that later.
Here is part of a very good analysis of the Iranian budget by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani:
In keeping his right-of-the-center economic ideology, Rouhani is putting his faith in the ability of the private sector, domestic and foreign, to invest and expand employment while the government tries its best to stay out of the way.
What we do know is that the talk of continuing sanctions is keeping foreign investors at bay, at least for the moment. With weary foreign investors, the private sector-led growth strategy does not seem very promising.
One of the main stated goals of this budget is to create jobs, but it is hard to see how it can do that by slashing the development budget at a time that interest rates are very high (they exceed inflation by 5 percentage points or more). The unemployment rate has been rising in the five years that Rouhani has been in office, mainly because of increased supply pressure, but low demand has been an equal culprit. With unfavorable news about the future of the nuclear deal and the removal of sanctions, thanks to the 180 degree turn in US policy toward Iran, the prospects for a foreign-investment driven recovery are dim. With public patience running low, the debates in the parliament over this budget should be more serious than the usual haggling over the needs of special interests.
The biggest budget cut is reserved for the popular cash transfer program, which is much maligned by government experts and the business press. Started in 2011, under president Ahmadinejad, the program gave each Iranian a stipend of about $90 per month (USD PPP), financed by savings from energy subsidy reform and printing money. Rouhani has been against this program from the beginning and has been undermining it since he was elected, but this year he gets to deliver the death blow: he proposes to cut the funding for the program by more than half, from 10% of total government expenditures to 5.4%. He is not proposing to cut the level of individual transfers, which inflation has done already — they are now worth less than one-third of their original amount — but to cut the number of recipients. The government intention to cut cash transfers is highly controversial, and has been hotly debated in social media since it was made public three weeks ago. Along with the announcement that the price of gasoline will be 50% higher next year, it is undoubtedly a source of discontent that has been displayed in Iranian cities in recent days. With inevitable errors in cutting people out of the roll, expect more disgruntled citizens.
https://djavadsalehi.com/2017/12/31/rouhanis-new-budget-aims-to-eliminate-cash-transfers/
Addressing the protests that started in Mashhad, former hard-line parliament member Hamid Rasaei accused media linked to Rouhani of censoring those who are “protesting the current situation.” Mehdi Mohammadi, the former adviser to Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote that “protesting against economic difficulties is the right of the people.”
Conservative analyst Vahid Yaminpour tweeted, “It has been reported that the president has called an emergency meeting. I hope that before the security and intelligence ministers give their reports on how to quiet the protesters, the economic ministers will think about how to improve the current situation.”
Earlier, Rouhani’s vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, alluded to his conservative foes’ having sparked the protests in Mashhad. “Those who took actions against the administration should know that the smoke from their actions will go into their own eyes,” he said. “When street movements are begun, others will ride it, and those who started it will not end it.” More independent-minded conservative analysts have also had a similar analysis. Amir Mohebian told Tasnim News Agency that in Mashhad, the administration’s rivals were involved, but that they had not expected the protests to take on a life of their own.
Administration officials have not been dismissive of the economic grievances, however. Akbar Torkan, a special adviser to Rouhani, discussed the impact of corruption. “One of the important and sensitive issues is corruption,” Torkan said. “Corruption is something that people understand and sense. When they enter a government agency to do something and they realize that unless they give money their work won’t get done, they sense the corruption. Worse than that, when they want to file a complaint about it they realize there is nowhere to file their complaint.”
While the method of mobilization is becoming clear, it is still unknown who, if any person or group, is leading the protests. The absence of a discernible leader has left the authorities unable to point the finger, such as in 2009, beyond the usual accusations blaming foreign intelligence services and hostile states. The speed of the geographical spread of the protests along with the apparent lack of a leader has, according to some accounts, even left some protesters puzzled, let alone most political observers. This could provide an opportunity for a variety of groups to hijack the protests.
Moreover, protester demands do not appear unitary. Chants and slogans vary from criticism of “high prices” to an outright end to the Islamic Republic. To gain a greater grasp of the situation, one important question to consider is that of who precisely is protesting.
Chanting: Reza! Reza Pahlavi!
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