And then there was one

President Putin looks set to walk tomorrow?s election. Does the lack of any real opposition show the Russian people have grown tired of democracy already?

Tomorrow?s presidential elections in Russia are so much a foregone conclusion ? 90 per cent of the population are confident of Vladimir Putin?s triumph ? that authorities fear the country?s citizens may choose not to bother voting at all. Putin does not run a campaign; he just continues to rule supreme, while the country?s state-controlled television channels track his every move. The President?s only official campaign appearance was three weeks ago, when he delivered a speech to the so-called ?election trustees? ? campaigners in the regions who muster support for the official candidates. He need hardly have bothered: the five other candidates together will hardly poll more than 20 per cent of the vote against Putin?s projected 60 or 70 per cent. Does this mean, many are asking, that Russia?s democracy has fallen almost as soon as it has left the starting gate?

It does not help that Putin?s opposition has been so weak. Take the Russian President?s most outspoken critic, the Liberal former vice-speaker of the Duma, Irina Khakamada. Her party, the Union of Right Forces, failed to make it into Parliament in last December?s elections. The Communists were the big losers of those parliamentary elections too: their support nearly halved after threats from the Kremlin. Former reformist Foreign Trade Minister, Sergei Glazyev, now a left-wing populist, for a time seemed to be a dangerous contender capable of eating into Putin?s majority; his Rodina or Motherland movement won nearly 10 per cent in the Duma vote, undermining the Communists. But when Glazyev ? the only candidate who appeals to the Orthodox electorate with his appeal to ?traditional Russian values? ? decided to take on the President he was rapidly denied support by his Duma colleagues who pledged allegiance to the Kremlin and elected a new parliamentary faction leader in his place.

Another contender, the former Duma chairman and Russian security council chief under Boris Yeltsin, Ivan Rybkin, has also dropped out. A vigorous critic of Putin, supported by the London-based millionaire exile Boris Berezovsky, Rybkin had to quit after all the TV channels refused to air his campaign videos. He was then hobbled by a mysterious kidnapping, which appears to have been aimed at making him look mentally unstable. The Kremlin has also weighed down heavily on ?Russia?s Jean-Marie Le Pen?, as he likes to describe himself. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the maverick leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party, has responded ironically to Kremlin pressure by fielding his own chief bodyguard, the semi-literate Vladimir Malyshkin, as candidate. Last on the candidate list comes Sergei Mironov, Putin?s appointee as speaker of the upper house of parliament. He is running ?to support our President?.

Whatever their inherent defects, the opposition have been victims of the massive powers invested in Russia?s executive. Putin benefits from a pliant parliament, where the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party has a majority and the power to alter Russia?s Constitution. All television channels are state-controlled. The state security service is newly invigorated and omnipresent. Courts and other institutions are weak, as is civic society in the wake of decades of Communism. Putin?s recent surprise sacking of his prime minister of four years, who was replaced with a loyal and faceless former minister of foreign trade, signals to many observers the centralisation of economic policy in the Kremlin.

It also indicates a style of government that has become increasingly unpredictable as it becomes less accountable, as a high-level Kremlin bureaucrat on the reformist wing of the presidential administration told me recently. ?No one knows what prompts Putin to make this or that decision. He hears from everybody, takes the information in and then issues orders. There is no reasoning or motivation ? just an order. I could come back to the Kremlin now and find out I am fired.?

The political commentator Leonid Radzikhovsky believes that in Russia politics no longer exists. The political process takes place in the head of one man, he says. ?Everything else is a farce ? as the current election campaign shows.?

But Putin?s autocracy can also be seen as a reversion to what Professor Lilia Shevtsova at the Carnegie Moscow Centre calls ?the eternal Russian system?. She believes that power in Russia has always been indivisible and highly centralised; Putin?s four years, she says, follow the pattern set by the tsars and the Communists of an autocrat at the top of a bureaucratic pyramid which is unchecked and uncontrolled.

Should anyone expect otherwise? Russia lacks a democratic tradition. The country abolished serfdom less than 150 years ago and has endured nearly 80 years of totalitarianism and its attendant horrors. After the chaotic 1990s, the majority of the population is either disenchanted with politics or seduced by the vision of a strong-arm regime leading them into the promised land. For many Russians, political opposition is either alien or seen as detrimental to Russia?s development.

But Professor Shevtsova also points out that supreme authority requires some means of legitimation ? hence the elections without which Putin?s style of government would be unacceptable in the West. But the problem now is that, while most Russians are happy to put their complete trust in Vladimir Putin and renounce competition in politics, they have to be persuaded to vote in an election which is a foregone conclusion. As the ?Russian system? becomes embedded, this will become harder and harder; some believe there may come a time when some people in the Kremlin may decide to do away with the inconvenience and expense of elections altogether.

That will depend, in part, on the longevity of the current administration. Putin may well stay on in some way or another after his term expires in 2008. But a government that relies so heavily on one man is inherently unstable and prone to unexpected shocks. These are possible: economic growth is vulnerable to world oil and gas prices. But many Kremlin inhabitants seem to discard this notion. ?We have $80 billion (?43 billion) of Central Bank reserves ? and growing,? one administration adviser confided to me over gin and tonic. ?We are rich and independent of the West. We need to make Russia strong again ? and this means reviving the military-industrial complex, modernising infrastructure, even letting in foreign investment ? but on our terms. We don?t care for these clowns, the so called opposition, or what the Americans or the Europeans think. We?ll do our own thing.?

Putin?s view may not exactly coincide with this bragging. He seems to be a more nuanced and complex personality. But he wants to look confident ? and he does. In the now-famous University Hall speech, he promised the nation not to stand again in 2008 ? but to find a ?worthy successor?.

Konstantin Eggert is editor-in-chief of the BBC Russian Service Moscow bureau.