Election Just Putin on Show of Democracy?

MOSCOW, Feb. 29, 2008— -- In two days, Russia will elect a new president, but walking through the streets of Moscow, there is little evidence of an imminent election.

There is no tension in the air. There are no fiery debates, no nail-biting primaries. One campaign poster hangs in the capital.

"We can't compare this with the competition between Hillary [Clinton] and Barack Obama, between [John] McCain and Hillary," former Russian Duma member and political analyst Vladimir Ryzhkov told ABC News. "It's totally different. It's a monopoly. It's only one candidate who must be elected in March. It's not elections. It's Soviet-like elections."

Russians are by now familiar with the favored candidate, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, although only a few years ago he was virtually unknown.

Medvedev has worked most of his life as a lawyer and has never run for public office. What makes Medvedev appealing to Russians is his very close relationship with the enormously popular President Vladimir Putin, which dates back some 17 years.

"Medvedev knows very well and all around him that he owes his popularity, his nomination, his assured victory in the presidential election to Putin," Carnegie Institute analyst Masha Lipman said. "His main claim to fame in the public opinion today is the fact that he's close to Putin and trusted by him. There is nothing else to him."

In an opinion poll taken months before Medvedev's nomination, more than 40 percent of Russians said that they would vote for any candidate that Putin supported.

Russians credit Putin with restoring Russia's role as a major world power after the chaos and humiliation of the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During Putin's eight years as president the prices of oil and gas -- Russia's major exports -- have soared.

"Putin had a tremendous stroke of luck during his presidency with very high energy prices," Lipman said.

Amid this economic boom, most people in Russia believed their lives have improved under Putin. Katya, an economics student from Moscow, told ABC News that "very few people want this life to be different."

Putin has said that if Medvedev is elected, he will serve as his prime minister, further assuring the Russian people that Medvedev is the candidate who will provide continuity.

Former chess champion and opposition member Gary Kasparov contends that the real reason for Medvedev's certain success is the Russian people's fear of losing stability.

"People in Russia are concerned about any kind of change, because in the public mind change is closely associated with failure," he said.

Kasparov's opposition group, Other Russia, is outspokenly critical of President Putin and has been a frequent target of government crackdowns.

"What Putin is trying to present as what he calls sovereign democracy or managed democracy is just a coverup," Kasparov said. "It's a coverup of the regime that is anything but democratic."

Whether Putin's Russia is a democracy and whether Sunday's elections are free and fair are topics that hold little interest for most Russians. As for the Russian authorities, the only thing that seems to concern them is not whether Medvedev will be victorious but whether voter turnout will be embarrassingly low.

Andrei, a political science student from Moscow told ABC News, "I won't vote for a particular person on Sunday because there is no real choice."

Putin reached out to Russians in a televised address today, urging them to head to the polls Sunday and "vote for Russia's future."

It's a future he in which he likely will continue to play a major role once Medvedev takes over as president.