#10 - JRL 8167 - JRL Home
Moscow Times
April 14, 2004
An Unsettling Score?
By Nikolai Petrov
The most recent round of regional elections in Russia has spurred a lively debate. Some maintain that the replacement of the Yeltsin-era elite is under way, especially in the so-called "red belt." Others interpret the results as a backlash against incumbents promising another four years of business as usual. Still others note that political consultants and spin doctors, who had become increasingly superfluous in this era of managed democracy, seem to be making a comeback.
Gubernatorial elections were held in 10 regions last month at the same time as the presidential election. In six regions the incumbent triumphed in the first round while one sitting governor was shown the door. Three others were forced into a run-off, and two lost. Final score: incumbents seven, challengers three.
Let's put these numbers into perspective. Last December, eight sitting governors won re-election and only one tasted defeat. (In two regions no incumbent contested the election.) In other scattered elections last year incumbents notched six victories against one defeat. Incumbents thus performed significantly worse in March than they did in 2003. However, in 2000-2001 the ratio of victories to defeats was roughly two to one. In this context, the March result was nothing out of the ordinary.
Although seven incumbents safely won re-election, including the governors of the Murmansk and Chita regions, who each won a third term, the three losers last month have generated the most interest. What do they have in common? Anatoly Yefremov, Vyacheslav Lyubimov and Alexander Surikov all came to power in December 1996 in Russia's first round of gubernatorial elections. Yefremov was appointed governor of the Arkhangelsk shortly before the election and then held off a strong left-wing challenger to stay in office. Lyubimov in the Ryazan region and Surikov in the Altai region both came from the other side of the barricades. They were well known, popular and both had previously been elected to the Federation Council. Surikov had also served as speaker of the Altai regional legislature.
In the 2000 elections they all faced seasoned politicians: Surikov easily defeated a former regional chief; Yefremov was forced to a run-off but saw off the former head of the regional government; and Lyubimov dispatched the ex-mayor of Ryazan. In the latest round, no heavyweight challengers remained. A local oligarch and State Duma deputy declared his candidacy in the Arkhangelsk region but was forced to withdraw from the race. Political outsiders stepped in to fill the void.
The Kremlin intervened little in this last round of gubernatorial elections -- it had better things to do. Incumbent governors also had less opportunity to manipulate local election commissions. You'd think this would be cause for celebration -- democracy in action and all that -- but in fact there is little reason to cheer.
The problem lies in the new regional leaders themselves. In the absence of an established opposition, we have seen the rise of random parvenus eager to test their luck at the polls. The real story of these elections was not, for example, that the new Altai governor Mikhail Yevdokimov benefitted from a slick, well orchestrated campaign, but that in race after race there were no real politicians capable of mounting a serious challenge. As a result a retired colonel general is governor in Ryazan, a dairy magnate prevailed in Arkhangelsk and a stand-up comedian triumphed in Barnaul. Is this a process of depoliticization or deprofessionalization? Whatever the case, we know what comes next from Krylov's fables: "You've got trouble when the baker starts stitching boots and the cobbler's baking pies."
In a dozen or so regions of Russia, the governor has emerged from the ranks of the siloviki. The March election continued this trend. In Ryazan, a retired colonel general of the airborne forces defeated a retired colonel from the GRU. A prosecutor supported by the siloviki took 40 percent of the vote and nearly won the day in the Koryaksky autonomous district by making full use of the powerful law enforcement machine.
These regional elections compel us to recognize that the stabilization of Russia under President Vladimir Putin has triggered a process of political desertification in the regions and the absence of real public political competition. This new aspect of managed democracy involves not so much intervention in the electoral process or pressuring voters as the voters' fundamental lack of choice. Voter turnout remains healthy, and in regions where there is a least a hint of drama turnout can be quite high. Sixty-nine percent of voters cast their ballots in the second round of the election in the Koryaksky autonomous district, for example.
The protest vote is also on the rise. In the republic of Udmurtia and the Arkhangelsk, Voronezh and Kaluga regions some 15 percent of voters cast their ballot for "none of the above." In Krasnodar, Kaluga and Murmansk, "none of the above" actually came in second. This strong showing can only be partially explained as a protest against the compulsion to vote for a gubernatorial candidate when voters really only wanted to vote for president. At base it represents a protest against the problem of "elections without choices."
In a way, the current situation recalls the non-election of regional Communist Party committee secretaries in the first relatively free elections held in 1989. Back then the Kremlin chose to interpret the outcome as a vote of no confidence in individual regional leaders, not in the system as a whole. Time will tell if the Kremlin has learned from its mistakes.
Nikolai Petrov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.