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#16 - JRL 9063 - JRL Home
RIA Novosti
February 21, 2005
OPPOSITION FIGHTS ITS WAY INTO THE KREMLIN
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Yury Filippov)

At a round-table discussion last Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin met with leaders of the four State Duma factions: United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), and Rodina (Homeland). A stormy session in the lower chamber preceded the meeting, as last week the Duma rejected a no-confidence vote in the government proposed by the Communists and Homeland. The left-wing patriotic minority demanded that the government be dismissed in connection with the recently launched benefit reform, which saw benefits in-kind that the state had provided for years to pensioners, the disabled, servicemen and others, replaced with cash payments.

A wave of protests broke out in central Russia, the Far East and the Volga area, when people did not receive their money payments, even though their benefits had been cancelled. Pensioners spontaneously blocked highways and held rallies under the windows of regional administration offices. Six Homeland deputies went on a ten-day hunger strike demanding that the benefits law be suspended and the government be dismissed. At the very least, they wanted to see some of the main "culprits", such as Mikhail Zurabov, the public health and social development minister, sent on his way. Last Saturday, the final nationwide protest organized by the opposition was held. Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, presented his own statistics to the president. According to his data, 845,000 people took part in the rallies.

If the Duma opposition wanted to show the president and his administration that the opposition was full of energy, had a solid social base and was a real political force to be heeded, it succeeded. It is of minor importance that Mr. Putin rejected the idea of dismissing the government and left all his ministers in their posts. It would have been unrealistic to expect the government to fall, as the president was hardly likely to replace the people responsible for developing and implementing a reform that had just got underway. Indeed, if he had continued the benefit reform without inviting the opposition to dialogue, this would neither have seemed strange nor illogical, as the left-wingers had opposed the reform from the outset. They branded it politically unacceptable and refused to discuss it in detail.

Therefore, the invitation to the Kremlin round table was a small but important victory for the Communists and Homeland. Their protests, criticism of the government and the hunger strike had not been in vain. They proved both their political influence and that they were the leaders of the opposition. Of course, they have not achieved any of the goals they proclaimed to their electorates in the six weeks prior to the Kremlin meeting. However, political programs are not important; political reality is.

Mr. Putin had not held any such meetings with the leaders of all the Duma factions for more than a year. His previous meeting took place after the Duma elections in 2003, when the pro-presidential United Russia faction managed to form a constitutional majority of 300 votes in the lower chamber. The round tables were not of much use, since it was more convenient and practical to discuss major current policy issues with United Russia's leaders and make the appropriate decisions.

After the last meeting in the Kremlin, the present lineup of political forces in Russia, their spheres of influence and opportunities have changed to some extent. Apart from the Communists and Homeland, the president also came out a winner. Mr. Putin showed that he was not tied for life to United Russia and is ready, should circumstances require it, to expand the circle of his political advisers. This makes it easier for him to control the government in a critical situation and demand that it work effectively. Besides, not all the left-wing parties' complaints over the benefit reform are based on populism, as there are elements of constructive criticism that cannot be ignored.

United Russia seems to be the only party that has lost some of its political influence after the round table. It had previously claimed monopoly ties with the Kremlin, but the event made it clear that the constitutional majority in the Duma is by no means the only political force in Russia today.