Russia Goes to the Polls

When Americans go to the polls to elect their congressmen, mayors and city council members, they usually have one thing on their minds: issues. Will the candidate support a tax hike? What’s his stance on abortion? Smoking in public places? The war in Iraq?

In Russia, issues are largely irrelevant. Of the five political parties expected to land seats in the State Duma in December’s nationwide elections, at least two – the leading Unified Russia party and the No. 4 Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) – have no policy agendas to speak of. And yet, according to the latest opinion polls, between them they command between one quarter and one-third of the popular vote.

What, then, makes a Russian party strong or weak? A strong party needs a strong support base. But in Russia, support often comes not from the bottom up (from dedicated voters) but from the top down: from powerful backers in politics or business.

This election season is a prime example of this top-down trend: The main players are huddled in the Kremlin, bent on exerting even greater influence on the electoral process than in the past. The short-term prize is control of the legislature, which will ensure the smooth passage of new laws. Long-term, there are two presidential elections to think about: March 2004, when incumbent Vladimir Putin is the hands-down favorite, and 2008, which may offer opportunities for a redistribution of power at the top of the heap.

In and of themselves, these goals are hardly undemocratic. What president would not want a complacent parliament? What political group worth its salt does not jockey for power ahead of presidential elections?

But the methods used to achieve these goals often raise concerns about Russia’s balancing act between democracy and autocracy. Federal authorities interfere on a regular basis in local politics; law enforcement agencies use criminal cases as a tool in political contests; access to nationwide media coverage is heavily subject to state control.

This situation is complicated by the fact that the Kremlin is no monolith. As elections approach, fighting between various factions and clans within the administration heats up and starts seeping into the public domain. Such friction, for instance, played a crucial role in this summer’s scandals surrounding the oil company Yukos and its CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The ripple effect of these conflicts recalls a popular Russian saying: “When the masters fight, the servants’ heads ache.”

One question on people’s minds is how much the “masters’ fighting” will affect the outcome of the December elections. More importantly, how much will it shape the reforms and policy decisions that follow: Will the power struggle kick-start bold modernization or merely preserve the status-quo, nudging the country closer to stagnation?

The answer will not be apparent right away. Meanwhile, long-promised but painful structural changes – such as reforms of the natural gas monopoly and the housing sector – have been put on hold until after the elections.

KEY PLAYERS

The dominating force in this year’s elections is likely to be the Kremlin-backed “party of power,” Unified Russia, which has been neck-and-neck in the polls with the Communists. Its predecessor, the Unity political movement, was created months before the 1999 Duma elections by Kremlin masterminds to provide Putin with a reliable legislative base. Over the ensuing four years, Unity became the core of a so-called “centrist coalition” in the Duma, merging with its one-time opponents from Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) and a handful of smaller groups to become the Unified Russia party. For the most part, the new coalition attracted people already in power, which has led critics to call it “the party of bureaucrats.”

Together, these centrists controlled some 235 of the Duma’s 450 seats, enough to easily pass most Kremlin-backed bills (which required a simple majority of 226 votes). Thanks to this “managed majority,” Putin’s administration pushed through reforms that had been stalled for years, including tax cuts, major changes to the court system and a new Land Code.

A trickier challenge to the centrists arose around legislation that required 300 votes to pass, as is the case with bills touching on the Constitution. Duma watchers will not soon forget the scampering, arm-twisting and four vaudevillian rounds of voting in September 2002 to keep the Communists from initiating a pre-election referendum on sensitive issues like the sale of land and utility tariff hikes. The centrists managed to pull together 304 votes and ban the plebiscite, which could have sparked public discontent prior to elections, but only with the cooperation of liberal lawmakers and with intricate maneuvering that led the Communists to file a complaint in the Constitutional Court.

At the start of the year, the Kremlin threw its support behind Unified Russia. In February, a high-ranking administration official called on the Justice Ministry to clear the field of centrist parties that might “take away votes from the key political force that will make up the real support base of presidential power.” A month later, marking the third anniversary of his election, Putin met with Unified Russsia leaders in the Kremlin and praised them for their “unique organizational and intellectual potential.”

As the administration’s favorite, Unified Russia stands to gain from the increasingly uneven playing field of domestic politics. Yet increased tension between various Kremlin interest groups could erode some of the party’s advantages. There has been intense speculation, for instance, that the People’s Deputy party, once allied with the centrists, could become a competitor to Unified Russia with the backing of a rival Kremlin clan.

Unified Russia’s main opposition is the Communist Party (KPRF). Unlike the centrists, the Communists have an ideology, a dedicated following and “brand recognition.” The main objective for the Communists in this year’s election will be to expand its existing support base by attracting as much of the protest vote as possible.

Yet for more than a year, the Communists have been shaken by infighting. Party leaders have blamed some of their woes on the Kremlin, claiming that the presidential administration – anxious about facing such a tough competitor – has been sowing discord in a ploy to skim off some of the leftist vote.

The first major conflict came in the spring of 2002, when the Communists ousted from their ranks Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov for disobeying party orders. After the Duma’s centrist coalition reshuffled committee chairs, leaving the Communists with just two of their previous nine posts, the Communist party ruled that Seleznyov should quit his post in protest. Seleznyov, who has long been a moderate and reliable partner for the Kremlin, refused. Instead, he held on to the speaker’s post and founded his own left-of-center party, Revival of Russia.

Another internal conflict came to light early this year when party leader Gennady Zyuganov and his supporters came crashing down on an erstwhile ally, effectively accusing the Kremlin of planting subversives in the party’s ranks and funding them through loyal businessmen.

Despite such discord, Zyuganov has managed to dominate the Communist party for the past decade. He is widely expected to run for the presidency in March, his third bid since 1996, and to lose with a larger margin than before. If this scenario plays out, the Communists would have a strong incentive to replace the rigid Zyuganov ahead of the 2008 race with a younger, more “modern” leader. The most talked-about candidate thus far has been economist Sergei Glazyev, who made an impressive showing in last year’s gubernatorial elections in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk.

SECOND TIER

The nationalistic LDPR, which gave the world a scare with its strong showing in the 1993 Duma elections, has become a fixture of the Russian political scene, but is not considered a serious political force. Its leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has long played the role of court jester. Early this year, the Duma’s ethics commission considered stripping him of his post as deputy speaker for an obscenity-ridden tirade against Washington’s plans to invade Iraq. NTV television showed a bleary-eyed Zhirinovsky slurring the following warning to U.S. President George W. Bush: “Quit it. Put your ammo back in storage and forget about your dad. ... You’ll lose Baghdad. Baghdad’s your grave. You got that, George, you @$#%& cowboy?”

Nonetheless, in the polls, the party has managed to keep its chin above the 5 percent minimum needed to enter the Duma via party list voting.

The two parties that most resemble their Western counterparts are liberal rivals Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (SPS). Both offer market-oriented economic programs and, over the past few years, have participated actively in the design of new legislation, including bills on judicial and military reform.

The two liberal parties have tried on several occasions to negotiate some kind of union, but the efforts have fallen flat. Both Yabloko and SPS (as well as the Communists) received significant financial assistance from Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose empire became the target of a legal blitzkrieg this summer. Most observers believe that the criminal cases opened against shareholders and companies affiliated with Khodorkovsky are linked, at least in part, to the oil magnate’s bankrolling of parties not controlled by the Kremlin and to his overly independent political stance.

Throughout a significant part of Putin’s presidency, SPS was the Kremlin’s right-of-center favorite. One of the party’s leaders, Sergei Kiriyenko, was tapped as Putin’s envoy to the Volga Federal District or “super-region.” Another SPS founder, privatization tsar Anatoly Chubais, went on to head the national power monopoly UES.

But with the Kremlin embarking on a program of liberal economic reform, SPS has experienced something of an identity crisis, never quite knowing whether to oppose the government or support it.

Meanwhile, Yabloko – whose trademark had been its go-it-alone attitude and arm’s-length distance from the government – has edged closer to the Kremlin of late. Party leader Grigory Yavlinsky has been meeting more frequently with Putin than before, while SPS’s brash front man, Boris Nemtsov, has clearly irritated the president at times. After the October 2002 hostage-taking in a Moscow theater, Putin accused Nemtsov of exploiting the tragedy for its public-relations value. Meanwhile, he praised Yavlinsky for making a sincere effort to help defuse the crisis.

As of July, Yabloko had leapfrogged both SPS and LDPR in opinion polls – rising to 6 percent of the vote as compared to SPS’ 4 percent and LDPR’s 5 percent. Considering the 3.4 percent margin of error, these figures must be taken with a grain of salt, but the trend will be one to watch as elections get nearer.

Meanwhile, both Yabloko and SPS have been hit by some painful defections since the previous Duma elections. Most recently, SPS lost its campaign manager to Unified Russia and was forced to pull in controversial businessman Alfred Kokh to pinch hit with less than five months to go before the official start of campaigning.

NEW RULES OF THE GAME

December’s elections will be the first ones conducted under the new law on political parties, passed in June 2001 to introduce stricter registration rules and slash the number of the country’s political organizations. President Putin, electoral officials and pro-Kremlin politicians have voiced the hope that Russia would eventually have a lean two- or three-party system.

As of July 2003, the number of political parties had dropped to 50, down from some 200 registered groups prior to the new law. Yet the party system remains weak: Most party platforms are incoherent; party activism in important elections is uneven at best; recruiting efforts fail to build up a permanent membership base.

Moreover, the new legislation has done little to rectify fundamental problems plaguing Russia’s electoral system. Candidates continue to rely heavily on the so-called “administrative resource”: the set of perks available to those already in power. It can range from the seemingly innocuous to the outright illegal. Some examples include: extensive (and free) press coverage that incumbents get as newsmakers, while their opponents are sidelined; the power to force public-sector workers, who are dependent on local officials, to vote for a particular candidate; access to government funds; and access to ballot boxes (with opportunities to falsify vote counts).

Media access is another problem. Four years ago, mudslinging on national TV became a central feature of the Duma race, which pitted two powerful groups against one another. Now, the three nationwide television channels have all been brought under state control, and the official line between neutral information on a party’s activities and “agitation” on its behalf is so narrow that campaign violations can often be a matter of interpretation.

The campaign funding ceiling has been raised somewhat – to nearly $200,000 per candidate and $8 million per party, but politicians and public-relations consultants continue to complain that the limits are too low and therefore foster corruption.

In 2007, the minimum number of votes required to gain seats in the Duma from party lists (see box, Getting in the Duma, page 56) will rise from 5 percent of cast votes to 7 percent. Optimists may hope that the hurdle will become easier to clear, thanks to the gradual development of stronger parties with clearer platforms and a more stable following. But realists will argue that the landscape of party life in 2007 will not be any more “Westernized” than the current one.

After all, 2008 is a presidential election year and the battle for power will be fierce. It is unlikely that interest groups struggling for control at the top will prove indifferent to the make-up of parliament and will take a laissez-faire attitude toward the 2007 Duma race. Of this we can be sure: four years from how, to invoke the Russian saying, the masters will continue to fight, and their servants’ heads will continue to ache.  RL