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#14 - JRL 9067 - JRL Home
Moscow Times
February 24, 2005
A Real Opposition Fights Rigged Votes
By Yulia Latynina

The democratic opposition and the Kremlin are both getting organized. The opposition has begun shooting the 125th episode of its popular political series "The Road to Unity," while the Kremlin is apparently working on a remake of the Constitution that it will unveil to the public in a referendum on June 12.

The Kremlin's plan is simple: Amend the Constitution to make Russia a parliamentary, rather than a presidential, republic and install a figurehead as president. Vladimir Putin then heads up the ruling party and becomes prime minister. "Is this the end of democracy?" you ask. Perish the thought.

Putin cannot step down. He and his inner circle would have too much to answer for: Yukos, their hideous failure in Beslan, the police brutality in the town of Blagoveshchensk in Bashkortostan, all the top government jobs they've bought and all the property they've taken away.

Faced with the necessity of holding on to power, the regime has put itself in a no-win situation. In theory, it has three options. The first would be to name a successor. This wouldn't work for a number of reasons, but the most important is that the first thing any successor would do in this situation is destroy the people who put him in power. President Putin likes to surround himself with nobodies. But when a nobody rides your coattails to the top, he feels no gratitude because he considers himself entirely deserving of his position. And he will never forgive you for making him kiss your backside for the last eight years.

The second option would be to hold a referendum and amend the Constitution so that the president could remain in office beyond the current two-term limit. But after a trick like this Putin would never be invited to another prayer breakfast with U.S. President George W. Bush again. That honor would now be reserved for Yukos shareholders Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov. And Putin loves his breakfasts with Bush and his dinners with his good friend Schr der.

This brings us to the third option: making Putin prime minister in a newly parliamentary republic. This seems to be the way the Kremlin will go. And that has the opposition singing the blues -- for no reason. There's a serious problem with option number three: elections.

The "party of power," United Russia, isn't really all that popular. Its approval ratings have always lagged behind the president's by 20 to 30 percentage points. The party is purposely devoid of compelling politicians. You simply can't make a legislative rubber stamp into an interesting and attractive political party. United Russia would drag Putin into the political depths like an anvil.

"What difference does any of that make?" despondent members of the opposition intelligentsia might ask. "What matters isn't how you vote, but how the votes are counted." That's true. But if the opposition is going to sit back and let the Kremlin do the counting as it sees fit, then the opposition deserves what's coming to it.

When the referee is impartial, a boxer can win a fight on points. If the referee has been bought, only a knockout will do. But no boxer worth his salt will say that he can't win a fixed fight. Any fighter who says so just isn't strong enough. He wasted his strength filming the latest episode of "The Road to Unity."

People prepared to vote for the opposition but not to express their outrage when the election is rigged are not an opposition at all. They're just like Grigory Yavlinsky and Anatoly Chubais. All of the recent democratic revolutions in the Soviet successor states, from Georgia to Abkhazia to Ukraine, were ignited by stolen elections. In each case, the party of power was too unpopular to win over the voters and too physically weak to impose its will using nightsticks.

An opposition that's prepared to contest an election but not to launch a revolution is not deserving of the name.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.