Russian President Vladimir Putin could be president until 2036 thanks to a new amendment that passed Wednesday.
The amendment alters the Russian Constitution, which currently allows only two consecutive six-year presidential terms, to enable Putin specifically to serve an additional two terms before leaving office. The Russian president is not necessarily guaranteed those terms: He still will have to run for reelection.
Putin was president of Russia from 2000 to 2008. He was prime minister of Russia from 2008-2012. In 2012, he once again was elected president. In 2008, the presidential term limit was extended to six years instead of four, so Putin presided from 2012-2018 before being reelected to a second term.
Many have brought the legitimacy of the current vote into question, which, if true, wouldn’t be an outlier, as the nation has a fairly dismal record on election fairness.
Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the independent election monitoring group Golos, told the Associated Press: “We look at neighboring regions, and anomalies are obvious — there are regions where the turnout is artificially (boosted). There are regions where it is more or less real.”
A Reuters investigation during the 2018 election posted journalists outside polling locations to compare the number of voters who entered the precinct versus the number of people who officials later reported to have voted. At nine of the 12 stations, the discrepancy was greater than 10%.
Opposition activists reported statistical anomalies at a number of precincts where officials would report 85%, 90%, or 95% turnout.
In another troubling example, the Guardian reports that in 2012, Putin earned only 42% of the vote in Moscow, a city that has remained fairly loyal to the opposition. In 2018, officials reported that President Putin earned 70% of the Moscow vote.
Reports of intimidating voters plague the nation, and the country has done its best to limit independent monitors from investigating the process.
Wednesday’s vote also approves other measures, one constitutionally enshrining the nation’s ban on gay marriage and another acknowledging its belief in God.
