Giving New Faces a Chance
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Moscow Times, 29 September 2005
It turns out that elections happen in Moscow as well. Until recently, elections in the capital did not interest anybody. It was a foregone conclusion that Mayor Yury Luzhkov would be re-elected mayor and that the City Duma deputies would be the ones that he hand-picked for himself. Nobody was even particularly concerned when accusations flew of vote fraud. Even if a criminal case had been opened and the accusations had been proven in court, little would have changed. If you believe the accusations, what happened was that people simply did not turn out to vote, and the voting committees then racked up the number of voters to the required total.
But that does not mean at all that there was some sort of opposition that which was squeezed out through vote fraud. It meant just the reverse: No one turned out to vote because there was no issue at stake and there was no struggle for power. In other words, there was no election. Whether or not there was vote fraud, whether people voted or not, the result was the same anyway.
The last time that there were elections to the Moscow City Duma, the city simply did not notice the election campaign. The candidates realized that there was no point in splashing out on pointless things like leaflets, posters or rallies. If we can believe the allegations made by Novaya Gazeta in 2001, those in the running simply brought in suitcases full of money to the relevant officials in the city government.
But this time political circles are buzzing with excitement: Moscow is being opened up to political competition. Luzhkov has promised to quit his post when his term expires, and the next mayor of Moscow will be decided by the City Duma. This means that the deputies' mandate counts for more. Moreover, there will be elections based on party lists.
The threshold parties must reach to be represented in the City Duma has been raised to an absurd 10 percent, and the number of seats has not increased from 35. Hence, those fortunate enough to be in possession of these mandates will by no means be politicians from all the parties represented today in the federal parliament. Yet this is what adds extra spice to the contest.
A serious battle is getting under way among the opposition parties. So far they have not been well represented in the City Duma and have not suffered too much as a result. But now, parties that do badly in the capital could be dogged by a reputation of being failures, and that would have an impact on federal elections. Since the national approval rating of all opposition parties combined today stands at 6 percent to 8 percent, they will have a hard fight ahead.
For the liberal parties, which in 2003 did not manage to clear the 5 percent threshold for proportional representation in the State Duma, these elections could be the last chance to prove that they still have life left in them. They have plenty of supporters in Moscow. The Union of Right Forces and Yabloko, which have been conducting negotiations for two years about a merger, have finally decided to run in the City Duma elections on a single list. Alas, in practice this could turn out to be a political own goal. The more propagandizing there is of interparty unity, the less incentives there will be for voters to go to the polls. And the results for the liberal alliance could turn out to be even lower than if Yabloko had run on its own.
Knowing that the city's inhabitants are fed up with official parties, the city government has removed the option of voting "against all" from ballots. But those who wish to express their displeasure can do so by voting for independent candidates in a number of districts.
For example, Samson Sholodemi, a young journalist of Nigerian descent intends to run for the City Duma. Supporting him would be a good way of demonstrating opposition to the wave of racism and xenophobia that has swept Moscow recently. For example, following the Beslan tragedy, deputies in the current City Duma floated the idea of restricting the number of non-ethnic Russians in Moscow and announced that if they were to exceed 10 percent of the total number of inhabitants, then it would be essential to prevent any more of them from entering the city.
Those who are falling victims to chauvinism are not only natives of the Caucasus, but also gastarbeiters of Slavic descent from Ukraine or Russians from the provinces who have chosen to make their home in an increasingly unfriendly city.
But Moscow remains an international city and, despite the racial paranoia in recent years, it is to a large degree a cosmopolitan city. An opportunity to demonstrate this will appear if Sholodemi is registered as a candidate.
Copyright 2005 The Moscow Times
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