Asia Times: Russian election results prolong endemic troubles



	December 22, 1999	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Russian election results prolong endemic troubles
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - While president Boris Yeltsin's loyalists herald Sunday's parliamentary elections as an opening for much-needed stability, critics say the poll is a study-case on how the Russian people are an easy prey for media manipulators.

Whether the election outcome will help in tackling Russia's endemic problems like corruption and the lack of civil society, remains doubtful at best.

Although the Communist party remained the country's main political force, with 24 percent of the vote, the undisputed winner is Unity (23 percent), a political entity formed just a few weeks ago by Yeltsin's followers and led by a minister, Sergei Shoigu. Without any political or economic program, the new-born party managed to secure some 23 percent of the vote, elbowing off many veteran politicians and parties.

Some 60 percent of Russia's 107 million eligible voters showed up throughout the largest country on earth which stretches over 11 time zones. Twenty-six parties and some 2,300 candidates were competing in the election for the 450 seats at the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament. Half of the seats are filled by the vote for party lists, while the other half is filled through races among individual candidates - some of them also members of political parties.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) remained on top with more than 24 percent of the vote, profiting from a cut-throat competition among its traditional foes, in which mainstream media ignored other forces.

KPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov accused Unity of not having any ideology, while using all sorts of administrative pressures to gain votes.

The group perceived a few weeks ago by most voters as a safe winning formula - the opposition Fatherland-All Russia party (OVR), headed by former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov - secured little more than 12 percent of the vote.

Another pro-Yeltsin bloc, the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) launched just three month ago, scored some eight percent in yet another surprise, while the liberal Yabloko party and the nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's bloc secured six percent each.

Russia's Central Election Commission Alexander Veshnyakov Veshnyakov told journalists that the Communists are likely to secure some 111 Duma seats, Unity 76, OVR 62, SPS 29, Yabloko 22 and Zhirinovsky's bloc 17.

Thus the Communists lost control of the Duma, though the pro-government bloc is unlikely to have a clear majority, argued Igor Bunin, director of the Centre for Political Technologies. OVR honcho Primakov has said his movement may form a coalition with the Communists - a pact that still could mean some trouble for the Kremlin.

The election seems unlikely to break the political impasse on crucial issues like creating a land market. The previous Communist-dominated Duma blocked all attempts to open way for buying and selling land, which is still state-owned although given in concession to private farmers.

Some 130 independent deputies - predicted to split between the Communists and Unity - remain a big question mark as their votes are set to determine the Duma's future course.

Unity has been repeatedly endorsed in public - in flagrant violation of electoral rules - by prime minister Vladimir Putin, who became Russia's most popular politician on top of the military campaign in Chechnya. Picked from obscurity in August 1999 by Yeltsin in a bid to restore law and order in Chechnya, former spy-master Putin now enjoys almost 50 percent presidential approval rating (against Yeltsin's less than one percent a few weeks ago).

Igor Shabdurasulov, Yeltsin's first deputy chief of staff, described the election outcome as ''peaceful revolution'' and called for the establishment of a ''Putin's majority'' in the Duma. Yeltsin's comment was that Russia needs a Duma that will pass laws without political maneuvering.

It is widely presumed that the real issue of the election is the fate of Yeltsin's inner circle, which fears prosecution for privatization scams after the president leaves office in June 2000. Should the team Primakov-Luzhkov prevail, they are almost certain to face thorough investigation of their riches, acquired in the period of ''market reforms'' launched by Yeltsin after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

During the campaign, the Kremlin-controlled ORT and RTR national television stations - the only source of national news for many Russians, notably in the regions - pounded on OVR, accusing Primakov and Luzhkov of being implicated in murders, while hailing the Unity bloc and ignoring the Communists.

The Kremlin insider and billionaire Boris Berezovsky was also said to be behind the miraculous surge of Unity. Not surprisingly, two behind-the-scenes players, tycoons Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, also secured Duma seats.

The city of Moscow offered a sort of consolation to OVR as Luzhkov scored a clear victory in winning the contest for the Mayor's seat in a separate election, with more than 70 percent of the vote. More than 40 percent of Muscovites voted for OVR, some four times of national average.

Luzhkov described the election campaign as ''super-dirty''. However, his critics argue that OVR underestimated the Kremlin's strength and failed to come up with viable counter-measures to the psychological warfare waged by Yeltsin's loyalists. Others say that OVR has failed to come up with a viable alternative to Yeltsin's system of ''proxy capitalism,'' as Luzhkov has developed virtually the same system of Moscow-based ''proxy corporations.''

One of the big players in the 1995 vote, Our Home is Russia, led by then-prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, won just one percent on December 19.

Another public relations miracle was the unexpectedly good performance by the Union of Rightist Forces, led by the some of the country's least popular figures, former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, held responsible for the debt default in August 1998, and Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia's controversial privatization program.

Thus the election just showed that brand new parties could be easily propelled into power via media manipulation, though few people know what these parties stand for. Not surprisingly, these bodies seem unlikely to stop Russia's economic slide, population decline, endemic graft and other disturbing trends - which emerged under Yeltsin's years in office.

The results are ''pretty disturbing, showing that in the post-Soviet decade Russia has failed to build a civil society'', argued Mikhail Krasnov, a political analyst and Yeltsin's former legal aide. ''It looks like most Russians do not have any political convictions at all, and they could vote for the most disgusting regime,'' he said.

The parliamentary vote is seen by many as a warm-up for the presidential election in June 2000 in which Putin, Yeltsin's preferred successor, is the clear favorite, while challengers like Communist boss Zuyganov or OVR's Primakov look increasingly weak.

(Inter Press Service)