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DANCES WITH
BEARS
Money doesn't always
talk
By John Helmer
MOSCOW -
Just before voters in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk
went to the polls to choose a new governor on September
8, a group of federal ministers was meeting at the White
House, as Russia's government chancellery is known.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin chaired the session of
what is dubbed the cabinet committee on protection
measures in foreign trade.
According to sources
in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade -
German Gref's ministry - they were confident that a
proposal from Norilsk Nickel and Russian Aluminum
(Rusal) to cut export duties on copper and aluminum
would be accepted, and implemented within a matter of
weeks. Gref, you need to know, was the target of recent
invective from Oleg Deripaska, chairman of Rusal, who
accused him of pursuing tariff policies to pad his
ministerial seat rather than serve the plants that
Deripaska owns.
Gref backed cutting the aluminum
export duty from 5 percent to 3 percent; that's a saving
to Deripaska - if he pays tax on the real value of his
export contracts - of about US$40 million on an annual
basis. Gref also supported Norilsk Nickel's request to
cut the copper tax from 10 percent to 6.5 percent;
that's a saving, subject to the same qualification, of
$15 million.
Kudrin, you should also know, has
been particularly benevolent towards Norilsk Nickel
these days. At the insistent demand of Vladimir Potanin
- head of Interros, a holding company with Norilsk
Nickel in its stable - Kudrin forced his deputy minister
in charge of precious metals, Valery Rudakov, into
retirement on June 1.
Rudakov had judged
Potanin's wealth to be ill-gotten and favored every
means of limiting his exercise of it at the expense of
the state. Since June, Kudrin has demonstrated he will
do his best to dismantle as many of the encumbrances to
Potanin's business as he can, starting with the secrecy
laws that limit disclosure of what Norilsk Nickel can
tell potential Western lenders and investors and ending
with the hand over of state-controlled marketing of
platinum group metals.
How much of a surprise
was it, then, that Kudrin told his ministerial committee
that he wouldn't hear of any change in the export duties
on either aluminum or copper. In fact, he said, he
wouldn't consider any discussion of the matter until the
end of the year, and maybe not even then.
Kudrin
was defending the sources of government revenue in the
budget for 2003, the Trade Ministry believes. Until the
budget passes through parliament, and the new
expenditure aggregates are clear, Kudrin won't sacrifice
a kopek if he doesn't have to, and Deripaska and Potanin
will have to keep paying.
Three days after this,
the Krasnoyarsk electors (47 percent of them) cast their
votes for Alexander Uss, the candidate favored by
Deripaska; for Alexander Khloponin, the former chief
executive of Norilsk Nickel; and for the Communist
Party's Sergei Glazyev, the plain-speaking economist
who, as head of economic policy at the Security Council
in 1996, proposed rescuing Norilsk Nickel from Potanin's
grasp.
For a while, as the vote count proceeded,
it looked like Glazyev was going to pull off a surprise
and win his way into the second round. Some television
newscasters even called him the front-runner for a time.
By the end of the count, however, Glazyev had been
relegated to third place with 21 percent, while Uss and
Khloponin placed first and second, with 27 percent and
25 percent respectively. They must now contest the
second round on September 22.
Krasnoyarsk is the
most important regional election of the half-dozen left
this year, and possibly of the 14 due for next year,
ahead of the parliamentary poll in mid-December 2003. So
important is Krasnoyarsk, one might say, that the
election campaign for the Duma, and for the presidential
election of March 14, 2004, has now kicked off. Of
course, had Glazyev as the Communist Party candidate led
Rusal and Norilsk Nickel-backed candidates, the
political shockwaves would have been felt throughout the
country.
As it was, Glazyev showed that
forecasts of the demise of the Communist Party as an
electoral force were premature, as well as unlikely. His
unusually strong showing should demonstrate that, if
Russian voters are presented with nothing more
convincing than a choice between aluminum and copper,
they will vote communist. That in turn threatens the
large but gormless collection of deputies whom the
Kremlin would like to see re-elected under various false
flags.
If there's a lesson there for the
Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin hasn't gotten around
to articulating it, at least not publicly. He might have
chided his chief of staff Alexander Voloshin for failing
to do enough to hobble the communist vote. Voloshin may
have then called Gennady Seleznev and the other
communist breakaways in the Duma to tell them that they
had better get a move on if they are to receive Kremlin
funding for their national vote-splitting assignment.
Campaign consultants such as Vyacheslav Nikonov
haven't exactly been on the winning side in recent
national polls, but they like to convey which way they
think the political wind is blowing. Ahead of the
Krasnoyarsk poll, Nikonov admitted he couldn't detect
any wind at all - not even a cool draft that might cause
Putin to catch cold. "I don't think events like the
Krasnoyarsk regional elections can influence the
political situation in any significant way," Nikonov
told this correspondent. "Whether Uss or Khloponin is
elected as Krasnoyarsk governor, this does not pose any
threat to stability in Russia. Glazyev's victory is
unlikely."
In fact, all Glazyev had to do in
Krasnoyarsk was demonstrate that the communist vote in
Krasnoyarsk could be one-third or better, in order for
there to be a real threat to the Kremlin's hopes for a
pro-Putin Duma. The fact that the Kremlin did not, or
could not, show that its electoral line is something
more than a bargain between the kings of cash is likely
to be remembered time and again.
(©2002 Asia
Times Online Co Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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