Auntie Valya

Kevin O'Flynn writes in the Moscow Times about Valentina Matviyenko a former Russian ambassador to Malta who is likely to stand in the presidential elections and who many believe is "a prime candidate to succeed Putin" next year:

Valentina Matviyenko has been called an iron lady, an undemocratic ruler and the woman behind a business boom in the northern capital. But on the streets of St. Petersburg, she is more commonly known as Auntie Valya. The nickname refers to a much-loved presenter on "Spokoinoi Nochi, Malyshi," or "Good Night, Kids," a television program that has sent children off to bed since 1964.

The nickname hints at Matviyenko's Soviet roots. She entered politics as a Komsomol youth leader in the 1970s and has managed to remain close to the nexus of political power as a diplomat, minister, presidential envoy and now St. Petersburg governor. "It is a light reminder that we know what she was before," said Anna Petrova, 34, a translator, who did not vote for Matviyenko.

Opponents say Matviyenko, with the Kremlin's approval, has secured power in St. Petersburg as ruthlessly as President Vladimir Putin has across the country. Now some people speculate that she is a prime candidate to succeed Putin next year...Political analysts believe Matviyenko has no chance of running in her own right but could run as a stopgap candidate while Putin waits on the sidelines for a possible return to the Kremlin in 2012. The Constitution bars a third consecutive term..

Matviyenko followed the traditional path of a Communist bureaucrat. After serving in Leningrad for the first half of the 1980s, she was elected deputy of the Supreme Soviet, where she headed the committee on women, family and children affairs. While a deputy, Matviyenko enrolled in the Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy and in 1991 was appointed ambassador to Malta. She spent most of the next seven years as an ambassador, first to Malta and then to Greece.

Then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, her former boss at the Foreign Ministry, called Matviyenko back to Moscow in 1998 to oversee social issues as a deputy prime minister. She served under four prime ministers -- Primakov, Sergei Stepashin, Putin and Mikhail Kasyanov. In March 2003, she resigned to become presidential envoy to the Northwest Federal District. She was elected governor a scant six months later...