Vladimir Putin today angrily dismissed protests against his regime as "provocations" and said anyone who took part in unsanctioned street rallies against the Kremlin should expect a "whack on the bonce".Putin's message is that all assemblies are allowed if they have permits. If they don't, police brutality is justifiable. The PM has no hand in restricting rallies and refusing to grant permission and he has made no mistakes in the past decade. The only difference with President Ma and KMT of Taiwan is that police brutality is only allowed when the KMT are likely to lose big face in front of visiting Chinese delegations. Otherwise, the police just form a barrier or cordon off streets so that impromptu assemblies are restricted to the point of ineffectiveness. Ask the police what law they are acting on in Taiwan and you are likely to get the answer that they either need to look it up and get back to you or 'shouldn't probably say' (see recent Tibetan protest at the National Palace Museum).
Putin said Russians needed to get permission before they could take to the streets.
He explained: "You've got it? Go and march. If not, you don't have the right. Go to a rally without permission and you get a whack on the bonce. It's that simple."
He said that in London demonstrators who protested without permission also got a "whack on the nut".
Writing on his blog today the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said the interview revealed Putin to be "mendacious, ignorant and spiteful".
Moscow's city government has consistently refused to grant permission for opposition rallies, and last week fenced off Triumfalnaya square ahead of tomorrow's protest. Asked why the government seemed bent on thwarting the rallies at all cost, Putin said: "Believe me, I don't know about this. This isn't my affair."
Asked whether he had made mistakes over the past decade, Putin said he could not think of any.
Both Ma and Putin are members of formerly hard line Leninist parties who have found a niche in a post communist order to gain popular support to effectively reinvigorate those orders in a new 'democratic' form. Both exercise high levels of influence over the media, police, and judiciary and both have previously openly stated their distaste for democratisation and individual freedoms. Both sport bloated egos and both have a penchant for drama - Putin likes to cultivate a rough and populist outdoors 'xtreme' image whilst Ma prefers utilising Confucious and the manufactured narrative of ROC lineage to 5000 years of Chinese history and the Greater China people, not to mention copious references to the Yellow Emperor, to build an image of the educated, benevolent but firm classical Chinese monarch.
I can't wait for the ROC 100 year 'celebrations' to watch a hugely expensive turkey absolutely fail to generate any public enthusiasm whatsoever. Before that, we get to see on November 28th just how popular with the public Ma's 'new' KMT really is ....
