Putin takes helm of main party

President Vladimir Putin was elected head of Russia’s main political party Tuesday, moving to shore up his continued power after he leaves office next month.

As head of the United Russia party, Putin will hold sway over parliament through the party’s controlling majority. That means the former KGB officer and popular political leader, who is also expected to be appointed prime minister, will be able to engineer constitutional amendments or begin impeachment proceedings.

The move could also set the stage for Putin’s return to the Kremlin in the 2012 presidential election, analysts said.

Putin’s election as party chief feeds the impression that, although he may bow to his constitutional duty to step down as president, he has no intention of relinquishing the extensive power he has carefully consolidated. Putin will take up his new posts just as his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, moves into the Kremlin as the new president.

Tuesday’s announcement was carried out with pageantry reminiscent of Soviet-era power plays, as hundreds of delegates raised cards in unison to vote unanimously for their new party boss.

“I accept the offer of the party and its leaders with gratitude,” Putin told the assembly, which promptly gave him a standing ovation. Putin interrupted, almost shouting to finish his acceptance speech. And then, amid swelling applause, Putin and Medvedev shook hands.

“Today, even more than before, we need the consolidation of political forces and the spiritual unity of our people,” Putin said. “We need responsible authorities, working efficiently and in coordinated effort on all levels, and acting as a unified organism.”

Putin and Medvedev presented the outgoing president’s new job as a guarantee of stability. Critics said it was merely another step in the authoritarianism that has been creeping over Russia since Putin became president in 1999.

The party congress drew inevitable comparisons to the old Communist Party meetings, and many analysts pointed out that in Soviet days, the party chief could reign as a de facto dictator.

“The country is being thrown further back into the past,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy leader of the opposition Yabloko party. “The old Soviet-type one-party system will quickly lead us into a new stagnation period.”

Putin and Medvedev have sought to present themselves as a solid team that will rule cooperatively. But observers have been highly skeptical of this arrangement, pointing out that Putin was unlikely to sit quietly in the less powerful of the two posts while Medvedev roamed the globe as head of state.

“This move makes him a much less vulnerable premier in the new government because he will have a solid base of support in parliament,” said Lilia Shevtsova, senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Thus the role of the government will become more pronounced, while the position of Medvedev as president will become weaker.”

Sergei Markov, a United Russia lawmaker close to the Kremlin, said Putin’s rise to party chief should silence the speculation about who will be in charge.

“It should be clear to everybody now that we don’t have a dual power in Russia, which would be ruinous for the country,” he said. “We have one solid center of power with two leaders: Dmitry Medvedev is the president with very significant powers and Vladimir Putin is a national leader of the country.”

But other Kremlin watchers are still predicting a behind-the-scenes struggle for power -- and the gradual emergence of Medvedev as a strong president in his own right.

“Even though United Russia is a party of bureaucrats, they will still bow first to the new president rather than to their new party leader,” said Stanislav Belkovsky, president of Moscow’s National Strategy Institute. “The concentration of power in Medvedev’s hands will quickly grow. All the most important decisions will still be made in the Kremlin.”

In taking over as head of United Russia, Putin will formalize a relationship that has existed for years. Despite Putin’s occasional attempts to distance himself from the party, United Russia was created at the Kremlin’s behest and later emerged as the de facto ruling party. Putin headed the United Russia ticket in last fall’s parliamentary elections, lending the party his star power and shunting all other parties aside.

“I will repeat again that the offer that the United Russia be led by Vladimir V. Putin is quite logical,” Medvedev told the party gathering Tuesday. “President Putin has, in fact, for a long time, been an informal leader of the party.”

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megan.stack@latimes.com

Loiko reported from Moscow and Stack from Kiev, Ukraine.