Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has signed a new bill that could mean he could remain as Russian President until 2036. His current presidency ends in 2024.
The Russian constitution, much like the US constitution, currently forbids candidates from being able to have an excess number of terms in office. However, this is to be overturned by the Russian parliament dominated by Putin's party and its allies.
Putin, who was first elected in office in 2000, has previously overcome the constitutional limits on his power by briefly stepping down as President and letting his ally take the presidency from 2008 to 2012. During this time, he was Prime Minister.
As it currently stands, Putin has now been in power longer than any leader in Moscow since Joseph Stalin, who ran the Soviet Union for around 30 years. It may now be possible for Putin to beat that record.
Yevgeny Roizman, an opposition politician and activist, spoke out against Putin on Twitter, saying:
"Putin today signed a law allowing him to be President twice more. Let the law be adopted, allowing the President to live forever. They really think that if they managed to deceive human laws, then they will be able to deceive the laws of nature."
Putin became wildly popular with Russians following the anarchy and economic chaos of the 1990s that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, male life expectancy in Russia dropped by around ten years for an adult to around 56, and even lower in some areas of the country. He was widely seen as bringing back order, fighting corruption, reigning in the oligarchs, tackling organised crime and restoring Russian national pride.
His critics say however that he is a despot who has used the nation as his own personal bank. They also say that he has quashed democracy, run sham elections and jailed and killed opposition figures, all of which Putin himself denies.
Most recently, he has been criticised for the treatment of opposition activist Alexey Navalny, who was poisoned on a trip to Germany. Upon returning to Russia, he was jailed and is now living in a Russian labour camp in the frozen north of the country. It is reported, but unconfirmed, that he is suffering severe ill-health and that he is being worked to death. Prior to returning to Russia, Navalny released a documentary which he claimed to show that Putin had stolen billions from Russia and used it to build a huge a palace.
Olga Mikhailova, a lawyer for Navalny, said:
"He is completely in the power of the prison service. Every day there are very serious deteriorations. It's very difficult to understand why this is happening. The prison service is not reacting to a single complaint of ours… There's been complete silence from them in the month since his health got worse."
[h/t: UNILAD]
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