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RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
Vol. 4, No. 13, 7 April 2004
TSIK MOVES TO CUT OFF DISCUSSION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
By Robert Coalson
Copyright (c) 2004. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac last weekend (3-4 April) became the first Western leaders to visit Moscow since President Vladimir Putin's 14 March landslide re-election victory. And they were profuse -- almost envious -- in their congratulations. "I am very pleased to have the opportunity to congratulate President Putin on his spectacular re-election," Chirac said at a joint press conference on 3 April, according to "Le Monde." "Our two countries share a spontaneous and natural connection, all the more because Russia is moving with considerable success along the path of reform and democracy."

In short, Putin has been reaping the rewards of his carefully "managed" victory on the international arena -- despite the largely ignored criticisms of international election monitors and a mutedly critical statement by Great Britain's Foreign Ministry this week. At the same time, the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) has been working overtime to paper over the controversies surrounding Putin's re-election win and the flawed 7 December Duma elections that set the stage for that triumph.

The NGO Golos, which monitors Russian elections, reported on 30 March that the voting rolls in the 14 March presidential election had been cut by about 2 million voters "in order to inflate the voter turnout." It should be noted that, although no one doubted that Putin would win the election, there were serious doubts about whether the necessary 50 percent of the electorate would turn out to validate the poll. According to "Nezavisimaya gazeta," Golos found that voter rolls had been consistently cut by about 5 percent in several of the regions it monitored. Golos' representative in Samara, Lyudmila Kuzmina, a member of the local election commission, reported that her commission was ordered to "clean the voter lists" in the final hours before polls closed. The NGO reported similar incidents in Stavropol, Omsk, Volgograd, Chelyabinsk, and other regions.

More generally, international and domestic election observers criticized the way both the Duma and presidential elections were managed. The Communist Party and Yabloko conducted independent monitoring of the Duma elections that they claim revealed numerous violations. Their demands for a recount were rejected, and the TsIK has dismissed virtually all of their objections. Golos on 18 March issued a preliminary report on the elections (see http://www.golos.org/info/press-release/3-006-04-2004/preliminary -statement-18.03.04.doc) that contains 20 specific recommendations for making future elections more competitive and democratic.

On 7 April, "Novie izvestiya" reported that Golos activists in Tambov, Kazan, and Samara have been harassed by the police since the election. In Stavropol, local Golos coordinator Olga Vartanova -- who was quoted in the "Nezavisimaya gazeta" report but was mistakenly identified as Olga Vakhtanova -- was questioned by local FSB agents, who accused her of spying for the United States because Golos received grant funding from U.S. sources.

Indeed, many of the official results of the election are certainly enough to raise eyebrows. Putin received 98 percent of the vote in Ingushetia, 96.5 percent in Kabardino-Balkaria, 94.6 percent in Daghestan, 91 percent in North Ossetia, and more than 92 percent in Chechnya.

Nonetheless, TsIK Chairman Aleksandr Veshnyakov has been eager to stifle criticism and to put a final seal on the election results. At a TsIK session on 23 March to confirm the final results of the election, Veshnyakov had several testy exchanges with the Communist Party's representative on the commission, Vadim Solovev. When Solovev tried to enumerate alleged violations, Veshnyakov harshly cut him off and even threatened him. "Just a minute," Veshnyakov said, according to "Kommersant-Daily" on 24 March. "We will proceed as follows. We will check out everything you say, but if the charges are not confirmed, as happened in the Duma elections, either you will publicly apologize or you will go to court to answer to charges of slander."

When Solovev said that the conduct of the elections would "be used by Russia's enemies for fresh attacks on the president" and that "our party would have gotten its supporters out into the streets long ago if we did not still have some small hope that President Vladimir Putin will use his second term...to restore Russia's greatness," TsIK official Sergei Kostenko accused him of "calling for the forcible overthrow of the constitutional order."

Veshnyakov continued the assault in a 30 March interview with "Itogi," No. 13. After noting that the courts in Russia have been "too lenient" in applying the Criminal Code in election cases, Veshnyakov nonetheless said the validity of any allegations of falsification must be determined through the judicial process. "It is not acceptable in a decent society to accuse the authorities of fraud and vote stealing before a court verdict," Veshnyakov said.

In the same "Itogi" issue, Yabloko head Grigorii Yavlinskii noted that the problem of the 14 March presidential election was much broader than mere vote-counting issues. "The presidential election was the culmination of a broad political process, in the course of which public politics was liquidated," Yavlinskii said. "It became impossible seriously to discuss alternative ways of developing the country. A situation developed in which it was constitutionally impossible to form a democratic opposition. There was no arbiter in the form of independent courts; there are no independent national mass-media outlets; there is no way of securing financing that is independent of the authorities," Yavlinskii said.

He added that the 1991 Russian Federation presidential election was the most democratic ever, saying that "beginning in 1987, pluralism in public life was incomparably greater than it has been in the last five or six years.

Yavlinskii also commented that the failure of the TsIK properly to respond to allegations of falsification or other election violations is further eroding public confidence in Russian elections. "It seems to me that if the courts, despite all our documentation, reject all our claims," Yavlinskii said, "then it will simply reinforce in the public's mind that there is no point in seeking honesty in elections. But if the TsIK thanks us for uncovering falsification and takes measures to correct things, then it will give people even more confidence than they had before the faults were revealed."