Putin encourages voters to endorse what’s a done deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin has picked his successor, adorned him in the political gold of his endorsements and papered the media with his name.

Now he wants to persuade voters to cast ballots in this weekend’s presidential election, despite the fact that the victor is a foregone conclusion. The Kremlin is keen to draw enough voters to show that the anticipated election of Dmitry Medvedev reflects the will of the people.

Putin’s televised image flickered before the public Friday, as the outgoing president appealed for voter turnout. Russian candidates will observe the so-called day of silence today, clearing the airwaves of candidates and endorsements ahead of Sunday’s vote.

“We all understand what a great and responsible role the leader of a state such as Russia has,” Putin said. “And how important it is for him to have the faith of his citizens. . . . I appeal to you to go to the election on Sunday and vote for your future, for Russia’s future.”

Putin didn’t bother to endorse, yet again, Medvedev, a longtime associate. There was no need. The former president appears at the side, and slightly ahead of, Medvedev in campaign posters all over Moscow. “Together we will win,” the slogan reads.

It’s hard to find a soul in Russia who says there is any suspense still lingering over the election. Medvedev’s ascendance has been bolstered by Putin’s popularity and a vast Kremlin machine adept at public relations and rooted in political obedience.

Still, as the election draws near, Putin and Medvedev are counting on voter turnout to put a democratic sheen on a predetermined succession, analysts say.

“The main concern of the government is to have sufficient turnout so that these elections look legitimate,” said Leonid Sedov, a senior researcher at the Levada Center, a polling organization. “It’s a sign of legitimacy, the number of voters. Otherwise, people everywhere, in the West and in our country, will say the votes were not numerous enough to support the winner.”

Civil society groups and election monitors condemned the election run-up this week, arguing that images of Medvedev so dominated state-run media that it hardly qualified as a campaign at all.

“Actually, that was the main problem: There was no campaign,” said Viktor Vakhshtain of the election monitoring group Golos, or Voice. “It looked like there were two candidates. It looked like President Putin was also running in the campaign. He appeared with Medvedev, he commented on Medvedev, and Medvedev commented on Putin.”

Technically, Medvedev is battling three other candidates for the presidency: Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an outspoken, outlandish ultranationalist; Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party; and Andrei Bogdanov, a representative of a liberal party widely suspected of being a Kremlin creation. None of the others is thought to stand a chance.

Candidates likely to capitalize on the campaign to criticize or embarrass the Kremlin were barred from entering the race, critics said.

Medvedev seemed destined for victory from the moment Putin gave him the coveted endorsement, observers said.

In the last month, for example, Bogdanov’s name was mentioned 450 times in newspapers or on radio or television, monitors at Golos calculated. During the same period, Medvedev was named 4,700 times.

Medvedev, who continued to work as first deputy prime minister in recent months, blurred the line between professional duties and stagy campaign events, election monitors said. As cameras followed him on a statesman-like visit to Serbia and jovial jaunts through the far-flung provinces, critics accused Medvedev of using his state-funded travel for ready-made campaign theatrics.

“Russian TV news went almost totally Soviet in this campaign period. Ninety-six percent of it was pro-Medvedev propaganda,” said Oleg Panfilov, director of Moscow’s Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

“We live in a country where the president is de facto appointed by the previous president and not democratically elected by the people, despite lame attempts to preserve some semblance of due procedure,” he said.

As the campaign ran its course, schoolchildren were instructed to remind parents to vote, and advertisements cropped up everywhere from subway cards to cellphone text messages. Workers in state bureaucracies have come under particular pressure to participate, monitors said.

“They have this feeling that they have to go, because they are working for the state,” said Yelena Panfilova, director of the Moscow branch of Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog. “Sometimes it’s a direct pressure, sometimes it’s more about tradition and a general feeling that everyone should go.”

Some instances of reported pressure went so far they became absurd, she said. Monitors found that one provincial maternity clinic was cautioning women against coming in for childbirth Sunday without first picking up an absentee ballot, she said.

But most chilling of all, she added, was the sense that the election was so solidly predetermined that any pressure seemed beside the point.

“The campaign exists as some kind of background, or landscape,” Panfilova said. “As a citizen of Russia, I have the feeling that it’s not an election, but merely voting. It’s not a situation where you choose. It’s more like you go and pick up the ballot and put it in the box. That’s all.”

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megan.stack@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.