Me: Ask Vladimir Putin.
During his recent trip to Kenya and Ethiopia, President Obama seized every opportunity to rebuke African leaders for the administrative incompetence and endemic corruption that have kept their countries mired in poverty and strife.
But I suspect nothing made them squirm quite like the way Obama criticized their habit of defying constitutional term limits to remain in office … for life. Not least because he did so to their faces, during a historic address to the African Union in Addis Ababa a week ago today.
Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end…
I don’t understand why people want to stay so long … especially when they’ve got a lot of money…
You look at Nelson Mandela – Madiba, like George Washington, forged a lasting legacy not only because of what they did in office, but because they were willing to leave office and transfer power peacefully.
(WhiteHouse.org, July 28, 2015)
Interestingly enough, the latest manifestation of this democratic despotism was playing out in Burundi as Obama was speaking truth to these power-hugging despots.
Burundi has been in chaos since late April when [President Pierre] Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term in office, a move Western powers and opponents said violated the constitution and a peace deal that ended an ethnically charged civil war in 2005.
Months of protests and a coup attempt were quelled, but the capital and some areas in the countryside have been rocked by sporadic violence and killings.
Some of the army generals behind the attempted coup have vowed to lead a rebellion to oust Nkurunziza, who won the July 21 presidential poll after the opposition boycotted the elections.
(Reuters, August 2, 2015)
In any event, it just so happens that I provided a preemptive answer to Obama’s question/lament last year. Specifically, in “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Turns ‘Red,’” February 25, 2014, I explained why no less a president than Russia’s Vladimir Putin refuses to (or dares not) leave office.
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It would make a mockery of the Cold-War principles he governs by if Putin allows these Ukrainian revolutionaries to put his puppet Yanukovych on trial – the way Egyptian revolutionaries are doing with their former leaders Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi; or worse, if he allows them to execute Yanukovych in the streets like a bunch of hungry hyenas devouring a gazelle – the way Libyan revolutionaries did with Muammar Gaddafi.
After all, Putin has made no secret of his contempt for what he decried as Obama’s failure to protect America’s puppet leader, Mubarak, from avenging mobs.
Let me hasten to clarify, however, that Putin’s contempt was and remains entirely self-interested. Because his only reason for standing in solidarity with everyone from Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia to Yanukovych of Ukraine is that he lives in mortal fear that the popular uprisings that toppled them might topple him too. Period.
This is why he must’ve been a little unnerved yesterday when even pro-Russian Ukrainians were calling for Yanukovych’s head. This, after they got a glimpse at the obscenely opulent, Louis-XVI lifestyle he was living at their expense. So just imagine what Putin’s peasant supporters in Russia would want to do to him. After all, he lives a lifestyle that’s a thousand times more extravagant than Yanukovych’s, having amassed billions in ill-gotten gains over the years as a KGB officer turn politician.
After eight years in power, Putin has secretly accumulated a fortune of more than $40bn. The sum would make him Russia’s (and Europe’s) richest man.
(“Putin, the Kremlin Power Struggle and the $40bn Fortune”, The London Guardian, December 21, 2007)
Trust me, Putin lords over a kleptocracy that has fleeced public funds on such an unprecedented scale, it makes the kleptocracies African despots lord over seem petty. Which of course is why he is so anxious to stoke the combustible geopolitical crisis in Ukraine to deflect the international media from drawing unavoidable parallels between Yanukovych’s dubious accumulation of wealth and his. Far better, for example, to get Russians drunk with pan-Russian pride than to have them pose sober questions about the billions he and his cronies embezzled from the $50-billion price tag for the Sochi Olympics.
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The damning irony seemed lost on Obama that he was citing the wealth corrupt leaders accumulate while in office as incentive for them to retire. Again, the reason they hold onto power for dear life is that they fear having to account for their ill-gotten wealth the moment they cede or lose it.
But don’t take it from me; take it from the horse trainer’s mouth. Sergei Pagachev was universally recognized as “Putin’s banker” and most trusted aide … until they had a falling-out in 2011. He has been fleeing for his life ever since, while trying to no avail to maintain control over his billions in ill-gotten gains.
Here, from an extraordinary interview published in the July 28 edition of The Guardian, is the insight he provided into not just the unprecedented scale of Putin’s wealth but the gilded cage that now keeps him trapped in office.
Everything that belongs to the territory of the Russian Federation Putin considers to be his… He’s the richest person in the world until he leaves power.
I don’t see any guarantees for him [if he steps down]; Putin doesn’t see them either.
Told you.
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