From: "Robert Otto" <jablotto@comcast.net>
Subject: Baker/ Glasser on Kasyanov's Ouster
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005
The Baker/Glasser book contains an important error that I have not seen anyone on the list note. In their discussion of the reasons for the ouster of Mikhail Kasyanov as Prime Minister in February 2004, the pair claim that he would have become acting president if fewer than 50% of the registered voters participated in the first round of the ensuing March election. James Goldgeier repeats this claim without comment in his book review (JRL 9203).
No such legislation exists in Russia. No doubt Baker and Glasser repeat faithfully something they were told. My experience is that Russian commentators will talk about Russian law without reading the texts. I would also allow that some of the people around Putin might have used this argument to persuade him to fire Kasyanov, itself a comment on the level of legal literacy in Russia. Nonetheless, Russian legislation specifies that the Prime Minister becomes acting president only in one of two circumstances, the president dies or he resigns.
The Baker/Glasser assertion, moreover, is a variation of a more common mistake that involves a misreading of the presidential election law. This more common mistake asserts that a failure to garner 50% in the first round of a presidential election makes all the candidates participating in the first round ineligible to run in the new election. In fact, the presidential election law (both the law that governed the election in 2000 and the one in 2004) makes a crucial distinction between an election that does not take place (nestostoyavsheysya) and one that is null and void (nedeystvitelniy). The former occurs if the turnout is fewer than 50% of the registered voters, but the law does NOT prohibit any of the candidates from running again. Only in the latter case -- that is, in a null and void election -- is a candidate disqualified from running again and only if it is he that causes the election to be null and void.