March 9, 2017　GPF
Russia's 2018 Presidential Election
The vote will be held amid an economic crisis that will plague the country in the coming year.

ロシアの２０１８年の大統領選挙
投票は来年、この国を困らせるであろう経済危機の最中に行われる。

Summary
At this time next year, Russia will hold its presidential election. In the lead-up to these elections, the Russian economy will continue on its current negative trajectory. At the same time, President Vladimir Putin, who is not as strong as he outwardly appears, will pursue more security and institutional measures to consolidate his power. Furthermore, the interests of Russia’s political opposition parties and the disgruntled public will increasingly overlap. While the opposition will not transform into a formidable political force by March 2018, the year ahead will lay the groundwork for this build-up. 

lead-up：準備・前段階
outwardly：外見上は・見た目には
disgruntled：不満な
formidable：圧倒的な
groundwork：この準備のための基礎を築くことになるだろう

Russian opposition parties operate primarily at the street level and have little to no national-level organization since the Russian legal system favors pro-Kremlin parties. Putin plans to use federal security forces and a new batch of appointed governors to control and quell unrest that is becoming more frequent in rural areas and secondary city centers far from Moscow. The federal government can no longer afford to fund solutions for regions suffering from economic crisis; instead, the government has adopted a strategy that involves offloading this responsibility to local governments at the regional and municipal levels.

street level：一般の人
governors：知事
quell：を鎮める
offloading：積み荷を下ろす

Introduction
Approximately one year from now, on March 18, 2018, Russia will hold a presidential election against the backdrop of an economic crisis that will continue to plague the country in the coming year. In our 2017 annual forecast, we cited internal developments as the most important issue facing Russia, but we do not expect the government to be challenged this year. However, the forecast also states that the Russian countryside will increasingly show signs of crisis, which will begin to turn public opinion against the current government. Growing dissatisfaction among the electorate during a presidential campaign year creates an opportunity for possible convergence of interests between opposition forces and dissatisfied voters. Convergence is very unlikely to transform into large-scale, organized political movements, but rather will serve as the preliminary groundwork on which future movements can build. 

cited：引き合いに出す
challenged：障害がある
convergence：一つにまとまること


Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting with permanent members of Russia’s Security Council at the Kremlin in Moscow on Dec. 28, 2016. MICHAEL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images

Political Parties
Putin is eligible for re-election but has not yet declared plans to run for office again. Regardless, he or a hand-picked successor will face little opposition at the polls in terms of contending political parties. This is because opposition forces in Russia express themselves primarily through street actions given that opposition parties do not have power in numbers that would allow them to be elected to any government office. 

hand-picked：精選する
in terms of：の観点から
contending：争う

Russian political parties operate in a limited capacity because the system favors pro-Kremlin parties; parties that do not support the government have little to no chance of gaining representation in the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. Therefore, the various parties’ performance in Duma elections needs to be viewed in this light. Shortly after assuming his first presidency in 2005, Putin pursued measures to reduce the number of parties represented in the Duma. In 2012, then-President Dmitry Medvedev appeared to backpedal on this move and passed a law that simplified the registration procedures for political parties. On paper, the new legislation aimed to open the party system to alternative interest groups. In practice, this is not the case. 

little to：政府を支持しない党は議席を得ることはできない
assuming：引き受ける
backpedal：撤回する
this is not the case：そうしたことが当てはまらない

Four political parties currently hold seats in the Duma, and all of them are pro-government parties to a degree. United Russia is Putin’s political party. It holds 343 seats and responds directly to the president, supporting any Putin-led policy or decree. The Communist Party holds 42 seats, the Liberal Democratic Party has 39, and A Just Russia has 23. The latter three parties are not seen as official government parties and therefore are considered to partly represent the opposition. However, the term “opposition” is used loosely here since the elected officials of these three parties rarely defy Putin-led initiatives. Votes cast by officials belonging to these parties reflect a disagreement with United Russia and bureaucracy while simultaneously staying loyal to the president and system. They have some mild distance from the regime but in no way oppose it. 

to a degree：幾分
decree：法令
defy：に従わない
in no way：決して〜でない

Russia’s anti-Putin opposition parties have essentially no representation at formal levels of government. Leading opposition parties the Russian United Democratic Party, or “Yabloko,” and the People’s Freedom Party, or “Parnas,” hold no seats in the Duma. They received only 1.9 percent and 0.7 percent of the vote, respectively, in September 2016 legislative elections. The minimum threshold for gaining a seat is 5 percent. At the regional level, only 16 small-party opposition candidates gained seats across regions that held local parliamentary elections. Additionally, Moscow has been known to take extreme measures to silence major opposition figures, discouraging the development of opposition parties. 

essentially：ほとんど
legislative：議会選挙
discouraging：やる気を無くさせるような

Leading anti-Putin political activist Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in early 2015 amid suspicion of potential Kremlin knowledge or involvement. Furthermore, on Feb. 8 of this year, Russian courts essentially barred the opposition’s leading presidential candidate, Alexei Navalny, from participating in the 2018 election by finding him guilty of defrauding a state company. By law, a person with a criminal conviction cannot seek elected office in Russia, and it is believed that the conviction was an unjust attempt to prevent Navalny from running in 2018. 

potential：クレムリンが困るような
knowledge：情報
defrauding：騙し取る
unjust：不当な

As a result, Russia’s opposition parties operate almost entirely at the street level with little to no national-level organization. Politically oriented street actions have started to take the form of “protest walks.” These walks consist of dozens of like-minded individuals discussing economic and political issues while walking through public spaces. Local media reports that such walks periodically occur in 60-75 cities and towns throughout Russia. In their present form, these walks are more a sign of solidarity than direct confrontation to the government. Such an approach helps to protect participants in that it makes potential arrests more problematic for pro-government security forces. This is because, in general, arresting passive strollers (rather than active protesters) runs the risk of sparking further public outrage against the government, and adding fuel to the fire is not a risk Moscow can afford to take at this time. 

oriented：普通の人向けの
like-minded：考え方が似た
solidarity：連帯
problematic：うたがわしい
passive：おとなしい
strollers ：ぶらつく人

２０１８年はロシアの選挙だが、ちょうど景気が悪い。プーチンに不利なのだが、ロシアは反政府派は地方政府に多少の議席があるが、中央政府にはない。政党はあるが、そのいずれもプーチンに真っ向から反対はしていない。反対派はあるが、力は持っていない。デモはあるが、おとなしくおこなっていて、過激ではないので、取りしまってはいない。こうした反対派は一般の人たちに働きかけているが、選挙活動にはなっていない。

ロシアの来年の選挙はまず問題なさそうだ。景気が悪くなると言っているが、そこらへんのところはなぜかわからない。トランプがロシアの経済制裁を解除すればよくなるのでないだろうか。トランプはロシアとの対決よりも中国を警戒している。軍事費の増強も明らかに中国を意識している。だから、ウクライナでの争うはしたくないはずだ。

金曜日。今日はいつもの会食がある。八丁堀の一汁三菜イタリアンだ。ではまた明日。