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27.03.07
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Churov Ascends To Diminished Throne
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By Dmitry Babich
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The Russian Central Electoral Commission (CEC) today elected as its new chairman Vladimir Churov, 53, a former colleague of President Valdimir Putin in the St. Petersburg city government. The session at which Churov was chosen was attended by the all-powerful Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the presidential administration and the Kremlin’s gray cardinal, along with Alexander Torshin, vice chairman of the Federation Council and other dignitaries.
Although appointing a new head of the commission is a seemingly routine procedure, the sudden departure of former chairman Alexander Veshnyakov just after regional elections in March sparked a flurry of speculation in the Russian press and among Kremlin-watchers.
The CEC is formed of fifteen people. Five of them are appointed by the president, while the two houses of the Russian Federal Assembly, the State Duma and the Federation Council, each elect five members, thus filling the remaining 10 vacancies. Having been formed, the Commission elects its chairman. Veshnyakov, who had served as the commission’s chairman since 1999, was expected to be named among the president's five appointees, but when the list was announced on March 13, his name was conspicuously absent. Churov was appointed to the committee from the State Duma, which supposedly took into consideration his connection with Putin when selecting him.
Why the sudden change in leadership? Veshnyakov initially supported changes to the electoral system, which according to most experts helped United Russia win an absolute majority in the Duma in December 2003. But when United Russia began to pass new laws limiting the powers of the CEC itself, for example, replacing the direct election of regional governors by a de facto presidential appointment in 2005, Veshnyakov criticized these innovations saying that they could "de-legitimize" the state’s power. Veshnyakov's critics point to the duplicity of his position, saying that he himself paved the way for one-party rule and therefore had no right to complain about the consequences.
"Veshnyakov enjoyed his power and media attention so much that he lost contact with reality," said Alexander Ivanchenko, CEC chairman from 1996-1999 and currently the head of the Independent Institute of Elections think tank in Moscow. "He was so sure of staying in the CEC that he has not prepared for any alternative job. He can't go into politics now, because working for any political party would mean a bad conflict of interest for such an important former executive."
There is no love lost between Veshnyakov and the leaders of Russia's small political parties, which poked fun at his posturing as a "king of elections" during the vote. As a result of stricter rules, which started as early as 2000, small parties were removed from the ballot for offenses ranging from minor financial irregularities, aggressive negative television campaigning or infractions like a party leader's failure to declare a car as his private property.
"Veshnyakov reminds me of a chief mechanic on a political Titanic of sorts," joked Boris Kagarlitsky, one of the leaders of an unregistered Left Front movement. "He created a machine that is so perfectly suited to managing elections that it can, in fact, work without the voters. In the end, everyone can lose interest in the ballot. We don't register our movement because this would mean having to comply with so many regulations that our life would be miserable. This man could manage Russian politics to death."
This critique is certainly true about the early stage of Veshnyakov's tenure. However, in 2005-2006, when the local authorities started taking the candidates of opposition parties off the ballot by suing them as provided under the new electoral legislation, Veshnyakov did everything he could to improve the life of opposition parties. He opposed a bill introducing additional reasons to deny candidates' registration and also spoke against a law introduced by United Russia that abolished the 20 percent minimum voter turnout and took the "against all" option off the ballots, although the measure passed.
Igor Borisov, a new member of the CEC appointed by the president and the chairman of the Institute of Electoral Law, says that making elections fully legitimate in the eyes of the population remains a problem.
"I consider the main reason for low voter turnout the fact that people are suspicious about the fairness of elections. At the local elections in October 2006, only 35 percent of the eligible voters cast their votes and only half of these participants were happy with the results, mostly the electorate of the winning parties," Borisov commented at a roundtable in hosted by the Unity in the Name of Russia think tank in December. "It is too bad that since 2005, public organizations are no longer observing the elections."
According to the new legislation, only political parties and state bodies have the right to send their observers to the polling stations.
It is unlikely that Veshnyakov's and Borisov's critiques of the new electoral rules will be heard. Indeed, on the surface, there seems to be no reason for the authorities to correct their past mistakes. Voter turnout in the March 11 local elections was 40.1 percent – higher than the 35.8 percent who turned out for similar elections this past October.
"Events are developing according to the following formula: all electoral powers are transferred to the parties and all parties are placed under state control," said Alexander Kynev, an expert at the Independent Institute of Elections. "The persona of the CEC's chairman does not change much in this situation." |
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