As President Medvedev prepares to take center stage for the biggest Q and A he has ever held this afternoon, journalists are pondering whether the President will take the opportunity to divulge any details about his election strategy.  Medvedev has apparently rebuffed questions about re-election with the comment, ‘Political life is not just show business and it’s not show business at all, it’s quite a complex job that is subject to certain processes which must be respected’.  The Power Vertical’s Brian Whitmore might argue otherwise, suggesting that there will be little in the way of the impromptu prior to this election, no matter how much conjecture is stirred.  Mikhail Prokorov’s surprise recent candidacy for the head of Right Cause party is, he argues, just another scene in the grand election puppet show, which is being artfully orchestrated by Vladimir Putin:

So one theory out there is that the groundwork is being laid for some form of managed competition between Putin and Medvedev in 2012. The assumption here is that Putin would return to the presidency, but the election would have a veneer of respectability and legitimacy.