You mean by killing, or imprisoning, the competition? By controlling the media? By using the military to squash others? By suppressing human rights? In that case we should elect Kim Jong Un, and you would be quite satisfied.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/putin-principle-how-it-came-rule-russia
"Elections in all new democracies suffer from problems of weak party stability, loose and fluid electoral laws, and voter manipulation and fraud. In theory and practice, these problems should decrease over time, leading to the consolidation of democratic institutions. In Russia, however, they have only increased, until in the 2011–12 electoral cycle the fraud and abuse were considered so widespread that popular demonstrations broke out. By the end of 2011, having come through a thoroughly fraudulent and publicly documented sham election for the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s Parliament), it became clear that the ability of opposition activists to seek democratic change was significantly inferior to the regime’s willingness to suppress them.
After Putin publicly wept, possibly from relief, when he was declared the winner of the 2012 presidential elections, targeted repressions began again, reminiscent of the early 1930s or the late 1960s in the USSR. Nonviolent demonstrators were once again sentenced to either prison or indefinite psychiatric treatment. With the economy suffering a downturn—mainly because of elite plundering—the crony regime’s inner logic was revealed: Putin would use force to maintain his potentially indefinite hold on power so that his group could continue to loot the country under the guise of “restoring Russian greatness,” while the opposition was able only to hold endless Internet discussions about the bespredel—the limitless and total lack of accountability of the elites."
This is what you call "smart and effective".
