Russian President Vladimir Putin has given final approval to the law that allows him to hold the presidential office for two additional six-year terms, opening the possibility for him to remain in power until 2036. According to a copy posted on the Government Legal Information Portal, the 68-year-old Russian leader, who has been in power for more than two decades now, signed the bill on Monday.
Putin proposed a change last year as part of the constitutional reform carried out by Russia in the number of votes in July. The Russian president, who has been in power longer than any other Kremlin leader since the Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin – said he would decide later whether he would run again in 2024 when his current six-year term of office was over.
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He argues that rearranging the terms needed to make his lieutenants focus on their work instead of “sped on their eyes in search of the chairman”. The Constitution’s amendment also emphasizes the superiority of Russia’s law over international norms and takes care of same-sex marriage.
Nearly 78 percent of voters agreed to constitutional amendments during the vote that lasted for a week and concluded on July 1. Reportedly, the turnaround remained 68 percent. Following the vote, Russian parliamentarians modified the national legislation, approving relevant laws.
Putin was first elected president in 2000 and served two terms consecutive four years term. His key ally Dmitry Medvedev took his place in 2008, which critics mated as a way around the limit of two consecutive terms for the president.
While in office, Medvedev signed a law to extend up to six years, starting with the next president. Putin then returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and won the re-election in 2018. “They think that if they succeed in deceiving human law, they will be able to deceive natural law,” wrote an opposition politician on Twitter.
The opposition has criticized the constitutional election in July because it was tarnished by a pressure report that alleged widespread voter fraud and irregularities and lack of transparency and obstacles that inhibit independent monitoring.
Since the voting, Russia has also imprisoned the most prominent opposition figure in the country, Alexey Navalny. Navalny, 44, was arrested in January after returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent’s poisoning. He blamed the attack on Kremlin. On the other hand, Putin’s government has refused the accusation. In February, Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating his probation provisions when recovering in the German capital, Berlin.
