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The Globe and Mail (Canada)
1 January 2002
Corrupt Russian elections turning voters into cynics
Promise of democracy has been supplanted by bribery, ballot-stuffing and murder
By GEOFFREY YORK
MOSCOW -- It was a fairly typical Russian election.
A bomb exploded at a Siberian polling station, killing one person. Another bomb exploded near the apartment of a controversial candidate, an alleged organized-crime leader and nightclub devotee known as Pasha the Disco Lights.
A rival candidate, the notorious aluminum baron Anatoly Bykov, campaigned from the isolation of his solitary-confinement cell in a Moscow prison, where he was awaiting trial on charges of conspiring to murder his former business partner, the same alleged kingpin who was the target of the bomb blast.
In the end, it turned out to be a happy week for both Siberian tycoons. Mr. Bykov captured 53 per cent of the vote in his Krasnoyarsk district in the Dec. 23 regional election, despite the handicap of his prison cell.
His former partner, Pavel Struganov (a.k.a. Pasha the Disco Lights), lost his bid for office but survived the bomb and won a legal victory: Police freed him after he was arrested at a club on suspicion of planting the polling-station bomb. For many Russians, the Siberian election was an entertaining saga of crime and violence. But in a week that marked the 10th anniversary of the Soviet Union's collapse, the election was a reminder of the shabby and deteriorating state of Russian democracy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Russians flocked to the polls to support candidates who promised democracy and freedom. Today, Russian elections are routinely marred by cynicism, bribery, fraud, apathy and frequent state control of the outcome.
Most Russians are so cynical about politics that they don't even bother voting. But since elections would be invalid if fewer than a required number (usually 25 or 50 per cent) of eligible voters went to the polls, authorities have resorted to a combination of bribery and fraud to ensure the minimum turnout.
In an election last month in the Siberian city of Yakutsk, authorities blatantly gave away financial benefits to lure voters to the polls. City officials stood at polling stations, handing out coupons for a 100-ruble discount (about $5) on the electricity bills of anyone who voted. Voters could also enter lotteries for prizes. The head of the regional election commission said the Yakutsk handouts were a form of illegal bribery, but no one was prosecuted.
Voters were equally apathetic in Moscow, where authorities offered free movies and cheap food to attract voters in city elections.
In both elections, authorities later said that the number of voters had reached the minimum necessary -- but only after a mysterious last-minute surge of votes in near-empty polling stations, which led to the widespread suspicion that officials had manipulated the results.
In both elections, the regional governments appeared to have fixed the results. Pro-government candidates won easily. In Moscow, supporters of the pro-Kremlin mayor won 33 of the 35 city seats after negotiating a power-sharing agreement. Most of the major political parties had agreed in advance to form a coalition, dividing up the seats among themselves.
Faced with elections that never seem to matter, a growing number of Russian voters are alienated from the process. In the Yakutia region, 8 per cent of voters rejected all of the candidates, voting for "none of the above." In Moscow, 15 per cent voted against all candidates.
Much of the alienation and apathy is because of the pervasive corruption and fraud that make a mockery of many elections. Russian governments, even at the highest level, are increasingly skilled at controlling results and manufacturing whatever vote tallies they want.
Last year, a six-month investigation by a Moscow newspaper found evidence of large-scale fraud in Vladimir Putin's presidential-election victory. It concluded that Russian officials had used tactics such as ballot-stuffing, vote-buying, bribery and administrative pressure, and it said that at least 2.2 million votes had been falsified -- enough to ensure that Mr. Putin captured a first-round victory.
Cynicism has reached such heights that Russians barely pay attention to the bizarre scandals and reversals of their politicians.
The former bad boy of Russian politics, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, caused barely a ripple this month when he dropped his ultranationalist stance and announced that he supports the United States.
Mr. Zhirinovsky, who had spent most of his career denouncing the United States and threatening to drop nuclear bombs on it, switched his position after Mr. Putin adopted a pro-Western foreign policy. Mr. Zhirinovsky said his party would abandon its anti-Western slogans, and he even suggested a U.S.-Russia merger. "The Cold War does not exist any longer," he declared.
Russians paid little attention to that flip-flop. Most are convinced politicians routinely sell parliamentary votes to the highest bidder.
There was an equally apathetic reaction to an astonishing comment by Boris Berezovsky, the powerful businessman who helped orchestrate the rise of Mr. Putin from obscurity in 1999.
The well-connected tycoon recently said that the Russian secret services are the masterminds behind a series of violent events that led to Mr. Putin's rise in 1999, including deadly apartment bombings and a Chechen rebel attack on a neighbouring region.
If true, Mr. Berezovsky's allegations suggest that the Russian authorities were willing to kill their own citizens to ensure victory for the Kremlin's favourite.
But there was scarcely any reaction from voters or politicians.
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