well you watching all these russian presidential election coverage when it's official good enough good to know has been elected president of the celts were announced with more than ninety nine percent but it's counted in spanish disappearing that it's sixty four percent of the vote. for in one of his praise the elections unsparing free on president and measures are taken to ensure transparency passive network of web cameras were installed at polling stations across russia with thousands of observers monitoring the vote. of the opposition claims serious

electro violations saying they'll be bringing people out onto the streets once again to protest against the results activists and independent observers have sites of irregularities such as people turning up to vote at different parties stations several times. about these debates cross-talk is up next. to. follow in welcome across dark i'm peter all about the return of lot of mere putin to the russian presidency how did the campaign change russian politics how will russia transform of the next six years and has a new dialogue started within society about the country's future.

cross-talk a new period in russian politics i'm joined by john locke on in paris used to rector of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation in london we have married a chef skee she is the chief editorial writer and a columnist at the independent and here in the studio with me has been heiress is editor in chief of business new europe or a cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want but i'm going to go to you first here in the studio was this election a game changer how was this election different from previous elections it was different in the sense that you know it was a lot more character i think in so much as a person have to play to the gallery in the way that he hasn't done before i think the big is a good thing yes yes i think the big change is you know up until this election putin has been above politics and he hasn't been a politician he was just the president as i would have you want to call him however the demonstrations you know he was dictating the to the paper saying this is important that everybody talks about whatever he chose the difference with this election is that he the demonstrations have pulled him down into the process and

he's lost control of the debate and so he's become. responsible accountable in the way that he never has before which is not to say that he's responsible accountable in the way that we have in the west nevertheless it was the beginning of real politics if you like in russia just the beginning ok john what do you think about that they begin. real politics and russia because i mean i wouldn't probably go as far as ben but i do like that there is a dialogue happening here where i worry about is that the opposition won't engage mr putin once he takes office again that's a worry here but there certainly is a conversation going on in russia now. yeah i mean it's possible and certainly the western media have made an awful lot of these demonstrations although we should never forget that they. in principle represent a fairly small if not tiny select section of the russian electorate my view on the result is that it's actually a mixed result of course it's a victory for putin it doesn't help harold

a new era because clearly he's been in power in one form or another since the year two thousand or indeed since one thousand nine hundred nine but it's a mixed result for him for two reasons firstly because of course the turnout was not particularly high that can have various explanations either apathy or a sense that nothing will change. and the other reason why it's a mixed result is that his popularity which of course is undeniable is at least in part due to the weakness of his opponents are not wishing to detract or rain on his parade because i think he is a very considerable statesman but the fact is he is also blessed with having weak opponents and i think one of the reasons why there might be a change that the kind that ben has referred to an evolution in russian politics is for the very banal reason that the memory of the one nine hundred ninety s. is of course fading when he was elected back at the beginning of his first presidential term because seventy percent of the vote in two thousand and that was

largely because he was seen as someone who would take control the memory of those years is going and now he will have to fight on his own record he cannot he cannot for long continue to present prevent him present himself well because the only way variance i think there's a good and you don't you think that's good i mean every politician should have to defend their record marriage of course you see you marry so you know what do you think about i mean that's that's perfectly fair that's normal quality. absolutely that's normal politics i mean i agree partly with ben and i agree partly with john too i think there's been a fatal weakness of the opposition which some people will blame on the way that portion has governed or rude to print in the last twelve years. other people and i think i would agree with them would say that it's. simply a weakness of the system since the fall of communism but it simply takes a very long time for real politics to develop and i think we have seen

quite a landmark on the way into real politics through this campaign then you want to jump in there i mean one of the things i think is very interesting here is it has been an enormous amount of focus on a liberal lot of opposition which fair enough that western media likes to cover but one issue i think that is not in favor enough and i think the other half of the story is the silent majority is beginning to speak beginning to stir a little bit here this is the conversation i'm talking to people who study think you know i mean all of us sort of said in war one way or another it's a process it's evolution you know the russians changing in the ninety's it was a basket case and chaotic today it's more or less a normal country and you have before you had an intellectual opposition. argument france in principle now you have a popular opposition and what that means is that people in the ninety's they were concerned with surviving and today they have a job or career or children birth rates going shooting up starting to worry about

normal things like property rights government services education pensions and they want to get more say but this is a process i mean i think you can rule. springs change and what we're talking about because the enemy even the people who are protesting you know they want to preserve their prosperity and that's key to them and so nobody wants the chaos of a violent regime change indeed they are actually quite happy to keep it in inch. they want to be more accountable for this and now it becomes very interesting now going forward is putin has was you know i mean i mean is it things that i find problematic about the opposition is that anybody but putin attitude which is very counterproductive john larkin if i can go to you because every even put into tractors with me before the election he was by far the most popular politician in russia but you could still having said that you still can't have the slogan anyone but putin i mean it's contradictory and it's certainly counterproductive ok what i worry about is if they want to want to engage the new president well when they say

that it's a real it's a rift it underlines their weakness doesn't it because that's the only thing they agree on in the western media we concentrate exclusively on the liberal opposition but the fact is that when you look at the blogosphere and when you leave certain circles in moscow also in petersburg the main opposition to putin is not new brutal it is precisely illiberal it is more nationalistic it is more anti western it is more conservative than the people who demonstrated at christmas time and you know it's only in this distorting prism of west and alice is that the liberal opposition you have linsky outlook and so on are put forward as if they were the only people opposing him they are not very good yesterday's are is a show the biggest opposition party as we know is the communist party ok mary if i can go to you you wrote a very interesting article right before the election and you talk about a generational divide and i think it's very interesting here because there's

a lot of young people here and it's already been mentioned this program about the one nine hundred ninety s. ok how bad the one nine hundred ninety was what they don't remember that ok and maybe they their parents haven't been able to convey too well because no one out of people don't want to remember about those miserable years how do you think this is going to play out because i've seen a lot of young people here even around me very idealistic and they do like some of the ideas of the opposition but are they going to be totalistic and not being engaging the new political reality. well i think there's two things that i'd like to say here i mean first of all that there are many layers in this generational differentiation in russia today there is the generation that remembers the bad old days of communism and then there's the group that remembers as it were the bad old days of the ninety's and then there are the there are the younger people who were spared both of those and who now seem to be looking forward and wanting to engage in politics and who've been saluted in this by the social media by the

internet and by all the things that didn't exist before which allowed people to speak to each other and exchange ideas who are physically in very different places so that's the first thing i think it's worth saying. the second thing i think is that the. the ideals if you like of the new generation are based on a decent standard of living this is something that the previous two groups in the groups the ninety's and the groups to the soviet era groups really didn't have and i think. a lot of people in russians in the political sphere were speaking about the effect all the affinity between the situation in russia and the situation in the arab countries which gave rise to the arab spring and they said well you know we have a lot in common with our because we had political stagnation we didn't have complete freedom of speech etc etc but at the same time often the same people are saying

yes but they're completely different from us because they are a lot of unemployed undereducated young people especially young men who have no prospects and whose only solution as it were was to go out in the streets and protest we have very different prospects and we don't want revolution we want something we want a change. we don't want a revolution we don't want to break things down then it's an aspirational evolution that people are talking about here yeah i mean this is an idea you with the arab spring i think this is a very major point i mean you know there has been was driven by a quarter of the population nearly all of this country's was under the age of twenty five and a large majority are unemployed and in russia the inflation and so at the unemployment rate is a twenty year low and this revolution as such is being driven by the middle class middle aged people professional people that have benefited over the last twelve

years in the white house intern much yeah and i mean you know ironically the people protesting at whatever side and some of the main beneficiaries of all the changes that have happened but this is why this is going to begin to revolutions along with this is going to be very civilized and it's a question i'm really cajun engaging the government and the government needs to engage back you know i mean that's the sea change here and is that the government up until this point has been concerned with the elites with getting the economy back on its feet which is talking about big companies monetize but have you. gone past that point and now it needs to start engaging with the people and small companies and employment and start raising standards of living and securing property rights and dealing with governments and since you know so normal aspects normal aspects here ok do you think we'll get back before the break do you think mr putin will deliver well it's difficult to say i think short answer is yes he has to . and i think you'll find out what's going to it but then you know the twenty years

i've been coming russia to this place is continuously gone forward i mean it's never going to dramatically in the p.r. it's been all for but it's made continuous progress which is why we have this middle class that are complaining today proclaimed we're going to go to a short break now and after the break we'll continue our discussion on russia's new president today are. wealthy british style. rise.

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to cross our computers about your mind you were talking about the results of the presidential election in russia lives can. live. ok john i'd like to broaden this out a little bit here we don't have much reaction coming from western capitals about the return of law to mere putin obviously we saw in media that they weren't very happy about it and governments around the world of pretty much sneered at this election though it's probably the most striking transparent one russia has ever had and it was glad to hear putin that would benefit if with a good clean election in only suffer if there were major regularities what's next now i mean is anybody going to call that amir putin say hey vlad congrats and look forward to seeing you in g eight. well there might be a phone call from peking or somewhere like that but indeed you write in your question to suggest that the really reaction from the western leaders is going to

be pretty tepid we know what their reaction is going to be because they started to get their reaction back in september as soon as putin announced that he was going to run for the presidency and within a nanosecond the warm words that had been directed at maybe if the us for years were instantly dropped and russia was once again in the doghouse and since then the coverage and the political comment the comment by political leaders on the russian election has think it's fair to say been systematically negative and sarcastic and condescending every single report that i've seen this morning about the election victory. couples it with allegations of your or at least same allegations of course which were made systematically after december and whatever the truth of those allegations. i don't think the reporters are generally very interested in the truth and the fact is that they stick and since the election in december since the notion of local election december the opposition strategy and the west strategy has been to make that allegation stick at all costs knowing that putin would be reelected

and therefore trying to sabotage his presidency from the very beginning by making these claims and trying to tarnish his election as having been unfairly gained you know mary unfortunately i think that the go ahead go ahead john finish up go ahead . well i was going to say unfortunately that had been something of a sea change i think once obama was elected so from the end of two thousand and eight to early two thousand and nine the relations were pretty good really from that point you think i'm talking about relations with the west but which by the main by the way is by no means the whole of russian foreign policy but that's what we're going to talk about but i think we'll now go back to the period before that because it's clear that the west absolutely hates. mary if i go to i one of the things i found very interesting remember i was interviewed on b.b.c. and there was anything going on between the united states and i and in russia and i was asked by the correspondent said you know you know putin doesn't really he's very harsh with his words when he talks about foreign policy particularly united states and i said well it's kind of popular among russians in his manner unlike

yeltsin unlike what about joe putin actually cares about public opinion at home ok he doesn't care if what americans think about him or brits or anybody else he really doesn't care and cares about russians ok i mean this is one of the things that irritates the west because you know a lot of your putin is sensitive to their sensibilities and their red lines and all of that. i'm not sure they even think about it that far i mean i think what is often missing. i think the words often missing from the western view of putin and from russian politics is the idea that there is a domestic audience to play to in russia as there is in america as there in in europe. the idea that putin when you when he's speaking before the election is speaking in an election campaign context is something that is simply it's not taken into account when you talk when you look at the words that

a barber is using at the moment the meetings that he's having the speech that he gave yesterday for instance to the israel lobby in washington these are pretty election moves to be seen in that context and yet when people talk about putin and look at how he behaves and look at what he says completely disregard the fact that he was in a pre-election situation i saw only one report in connection with the russian stance on syria which said you have to remember that putin is speaking to voters before an election and that this sort of thing goes down well in russia i think it's it's unfortunate we've got to get used to the fact that there is politics and there is public opinion in russia yes it's interesting we saw my russian friends know don't listen to these republicans you know because if you're just campaigning you know that they're like you keeping world leader for investors i'd like to have also. i mean this should be

a shock in the west and so much is putin is playing to an audience he's delivering a message word because he wants them to vote for him this is you know the democratic process in some instances an election why is the worst physically against putin they hate him i think it's because there's a clash of systems here i mean the assumption behind. criticism is that russia is not democratic but what the problem is it's not so much that russia is not democratic it's a managed democracy system whereby you've got a transition and the debate that we should be having that we're not even beginning is the west is looking and saying russia's political system is rubbish and discounting the people with discounts including it's not you know they should have the same system as which is full and open so moccasin but i think you know state that attitude is maybe naive or at least it's not what happened here what we're talking about is a transition if we accept this economic need for economic transition at a time what it is arguing is the need for

a political transition to. this is not turkmenistan where the president just returned with ninety seven percent of the vote one hundred percent duma. and it's not ukraine either which is but then you know there's the ukrainian it experiment where they did it for political. chaos and it's chaos and war over. which is clearly going to steal the country but i can also bring the elections there and i think it is looking at these new situations and saying that we need a transition there's no point in introducing civil society if we don't have the institutions to ensure the management of the economy afterwards and you know you can argue about the pros and cons of that but no one's even beginning this debate about what he's attempting to do and it's a very interesting debate the change in political system here is unprecedented in history and all the west can do is like your system is rubbish it's not our system and so we just dismiss it and i guess john the idea if russia were really to imitate the united states or to have super pacs right. just by i don't really agree

that the i don't really agree that the reason the real reason for this bad blood is that russia's electoral system is rubbish i'm not sure if that was what ben wanted to say but i certainly don't agree with it no i think he said i think it was really saying it was the caricature in the west. but i think the truth is the truth is that is really very uncomfortable indeed and that is that in europe and possibly in america but certainly in europe in western europe democracy is in a very evident retreat it is we in the european union who are living in a system of managed democracy although i wouldn't even put the word democracy in that we are after all in an organization where the greek government was overthrown at the very moment when it said it wanted to have a referendum on its bailout plans two countries have been effectively placed in

political administration every treaty that is new that is every new treaty that is . it is signed it is not submitted to referendum for ratification and europe does everything to prevent such referendums we are at the people who are in retreat we're in a negative transition if you like and i think that might be one of the reasons why russia is so hated it's a sort of it's europe's guilty conscience in a sense which is that opera which is in operation here mary i think it's been a really interesting discussion and i think ben has really had a really important point is that you know i've lived here for its work twelve years and watched evolution here i've seen pendulums move back and forth a little bit tweaking this tweaking now we know that they're going to change the way governors are elected again threshold for political parties i mean they are thinking about these things here there are people are protesting faye that they want change we see the political elite reacting to this i mean i guess for some people here perfectly in russia it's the same faces that's the issue that they have

a problem with. yes and i think this is one of the misjudgments maybe that was made in september when you know when you need to be if nominated. for the to be the united russia candidate for president again because i think there is going back to the generational issue there is actually a big big difference in background. way of looking at the world between putin and you and i think that europeans and americans maybe were happier with the sort of stance and the sort of language that mentor needed because you think. and i think that the new generation of russians or at least known extreme nationalist new generation of russians also felt more comfortable with me to be agents than they feel with point and that is one of the reasons for the great disappointment in the way that it expressed itself in protests through the autumn after the parliamentary

elections and probably that we'll see later today betty franco to you before we end of the program you're in touch with the business community obviously this was interested this result and happily can you explain the reasons yeah i mean it's stability in this world it's in the office i mean business not so concerned with you know democracy an expression of. people's desires there was debility they want to continue the economic boom that's been driven by. rising incomes of the consumers that they can sell to them and they want predictability that's going to happen they want to see more of forms and with putin you know it's as well isn't that in you know we had twelve years of prosperity and so many foods another twelve years of prosperity and so i think they're pretty happy nevertheless i mean these are going to be if you're going to be just as easy this time for is getting more difficult i mean the new new economy there's a consensus amongst all the liberals

a new economic model is meeting its. having said that though i think the investors on the whole you know invited this process president doesn't get violence you know that he grinds away putin which is their stated aim then this is very healthy and this is also what russia needs for long term prosperity otherwise we're facing the prospect of stagnation and of course you know even though it's. so i think you know and i know it's gradual transition the business community is very happy and seeing i mean already singing from the i think it's one picking up ok john i'm going to give you the last word here what are the next six years going to be like twenty seconds well i think that's the biggest challenge is probably the judicial system and you know ben you were talking about foreign investment and the business climate i think that's what the that's the kind of stability which is the most important it's justice from the judicial system and justice from the local administration and i think those are the two big areas where russia is probably at its weakest that is

the biggest challenge and then of course there are huge international challenges above all the international monetary system which is in chaos and needless to say the middle east so it's an uncertain world but i think that the world has not certain whether certain world people and this is when mr putin wants to deal with here when he thinks of my guest today in paris london and here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember. you can.

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