#15
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
June 26, 2002
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
POLITICAL SCIENTISTS ON PARTICIPANTS IN THE FORTHCOMING ELECTIONS
By Maxim GLIKIN
Russian political scientists gathered in Moscow to sum up the results of the past political year and make forecasts for the next one. However, digressing from the agenda of the day, the experts decided to concentrate on the subject of the forthcoming elections.
No one of the participants doubted that the outcome of the presidential elections is quite predictable. However, why then preparations for them started so early? At this point the opinions of experts differed. Say, Alexander Tsipko believes that for the current Kremlin occupant the second election will be much more difficult then the first one. In 2000, the nation was waiting for a psychotherapeutist - and Vladimir Putin coped with this role. Paradoxically, this time he is seen as Yeltsin's successor who began his career in specific elite circles. This led to the appearance of the subject of opposing the former and present guarantors of the Constitution. A seditious idea has appeared that anyone could have found himself in Putin's place and that one should judge him by his deeds, not words. Ordinary people started asking a sacramental question: "What did he give us?" All this means that the president again has to pay more attention to his public relations, subordinating his actions to the logic of a candidate.
Everyone agreed that the most important and painful reforms - of housing facilities and public utilities, land relations, natural monopolies, the state apparatus - will not start before the elections. Reforms are being postponed until 2005-2006. The nomenklatura will now concentrate on the cabinet struggle for a place in "Putin's election pool" (as Gleb Pavlovsky put it).
Experts deemed this inertia in the thinking and behavior of the elite very dangerous. Say, Pavlovsky is afraid of stepped-up activities by new radical structures that have no brands of their own yet but are already actively recruiting young people. In his words, they are capable of calling current political stability in question. Pavlovsky believes that young people are being mobilized for these purposes in a quite conscious and organized manner - the new structures deliberately do not espouse any clear-cut ideology: any force interested in destabilizing the situation may use their paid services.
In general, the results of parliamentary elections, judging by the opinions expressed by political scientists, are unpredictable yet. Judging by everything, the communists will be ousted from the parliament. They will be attacked both from the left (the New Left) and the right (the Left Centrists), directed from the Kremlin. In the opinion of Sergei Markov, on the right flank the Union of Right Forces will wage an irreconcilable struggle with Yabloko. It is not clear yet what will happen in the center, whether the party of power will go in two columns or one, under the current name or a new one. However, everyone agrees that the pre-election alignment of forces will be clear long before the election race officially starts.
Back to the Top
Next Article
June 26, 2002:
#6324
- Back to the Top -