#6043
#8
The Russia Journal
January 18-24, 2002
Democracy falls victim to cartel
Russia’s parties are conspiring to put their interests over those of voters’
By DMITRY PINSKER
Russia’s right-wing political movement lost yet another government seat last Sunday when Semyon Zubakin, governor of the Altai Republic, lost in the second round of elections to Mikhail Lapshin, leader of the Agrarian Party. The defeat was decisive – Zubakin received only 23.5 percent of the votes compared to Lapshin’s 68 percent.
Perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that the right in Altai lost not to Lapshin as the former left-wing National Patriotic Union activist, but to Lapshin who took shelter under the wings of the "party of power" at just the right moment. As a result, Lapshin received the support of United Fatherland, while the Kremlin itself kept silent throughout. But the moment the victory was in his hands, Lapshin hastened to make a reverential bow in Moscow’s direction, saying, "I’d especially like to tell Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] that the Altai Republic is an ideal place to develop alpine skiing. It’s a wonderful place here."
Meanwhile, Zubakin, though seen as representing the right, didn’t get the support of either Russia’s Choice or SPS. Add to this the fact that he had the whole of the republic’s business elite and bureaucracy against him and it’s no surprise that Zubakin suffered such a fiasco.
Zubakin only came to power in this conservative republic four years ago by chance. He was elected on his promises to fight corruption, and the funny thing is that he actually did try to fight it. And this is the result. But the right’s reluctance to support a progressive and reform-minded regional leader looks odd to say the least. The only logical explanation is that once again the right is trying to avoid any conflict with the Kremlin administration over what looks like a trivial matter. The days when parties needed loyal governors in the regions to guarantee them support during national elections are over. Today, these guarantors sit in the Kremlin.
A glance at statistics for all elections over the last year suggests that theories of some analysts and Kremlin officials about a creeping "red comeback" are correct. But of all the electoral winners, only Tula governor Vasily Starodubtsev can be called a genuine "red." There are "brown" national-patriot governors such as General Shamanov in Ulyanovsk and Nikolai "Bat’ka" Kondratenko’s successor Alexander Tkachev in Krasnodar. There are representatives of the ruling party, and there are chance people, like Sergei Darkin in Primorye, who have ended up in their jobs as a result of Kremlin spin doctors’ cunning and complex plans going awry. But to use former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomydin’s term, most of them are of a "worker’s hue" and demonstrate their loyalty to the Kremlin and to Putin personally in deeds – not just words – rather than feeling devoted to any party.
This would explain why the federal authorities have, to a large extent, lost interest in local elections of late. But in the case of the right, these explanations still lack meat. Their candidates haven’t won anywhere; they’ve lost almost all "their" regions. The first of these wasn’t even the Altai Republic, but Nizhny Novgorod, once seen as the stronghold of Russian liberalism. Boris Nemtsov is a former governor of this region and it is here that Sergei Kiriyenko, presidential representative in the Volga federal district and co-chairman of SPS, has his headquarters.
A candidate’s political affiliation was never such a determining factor in regional elections. Unlike in parliamentary elections, the vote for governor or republic president was always motivated more by personal principles than by ideology. People voted for a particular individual rather than for a political platform. This explains why Shamanov, associated by the public with the uncompromising fight against the "damned Chechens," won in Ulyanovsk, and why victory in Nizhny Novgorod went to former regional Communist boss Gennady Khodyrev, who symbolized in people’s minds the tranquility of Brezhnev-era stagnation.
Recent elections have added a new detail to this picture. The outcome of voting is decided long before election day either by the local elite alone or with the participation of interested Kremlin groups. Whatever the case, it isn’t decided by secret ballot at the polling stations. Such practice is creating a system whereby election results can be predicted in advance without the voters’ help at all. This is convenient for all the various political elites.
But then, none of this should be surprising, especially after the December elections to the Moscow city Duma. Just before these elections, the right and the centrist parties displayed a complete disregard for voters’ opinions and put their own corporate interests before their basic democratic principles. Political analysts call the kind of agreement reached by SPS, Yabloko, Unity, Fatherland and the Moscow government a "cartel of the elite." This kind of cartel is a direct road to the creation of a corporate state and destruction of what democracy has so far managed to bloom. There is no force in the country today ready to resist this movement. The Moscow city Duma elections showed that the supporters of liberal ideas are committed to democratic institutions only in words.
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