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03.12.07
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The Kremlin’s Forecasts Are Always The Most Accurate
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Comment by Georgy Bovt
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Duma Election Results Tracked Suspiciously Close to Official Predictions
It seems that for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history, the sociological election forecasts turned out to be accurate. Ten days before the elections, most pollsters predicted that four parties would get into the Duma, which is what happened, moreover, in the same order as predicted. United Russia was almost unanimously predicted to win a constitutional majority – and it did. The results of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) also corroborated the forecasts, which claimed that the party would win between seven and eight percent. Only the Communists didn’t quite live up to the pollsters’ expectations, earning 12 percent rather than the 15 percent projected. Just Russia’s result was the greatest surprise. Only a month ago, less than 4 percent of likely voters said they would vote for the party. As the election drew nearer, however, Just Russia’s support miraculously edged up to 6 percent. In the end, the party secured 7.8 percent of the vote, overcoming the 7 percent threshold and squeezing into the parliament.
It remains utterly unclear how Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov managed to pull it off. Not a single original idea was voiced during Just Russia’s election campaign and the party’s performance during the televised pre-election debates was uninspiring. On this point, however, it should be noted, however, that no more than five percent of the voters watched them. Perhaps the party’s success is due to the fact that the authorities did not harass it the way the Union of Right Forces (SPS) was harassed. Most likely, Just Russia owes its “victory” to administrative resources: somebody really wanted it to get into the Duma – and it did.
The fiasco surrounding the liberal parties was also perfectly predictable – with or without the use of the administration’s resources. SPS radically changed its strategy some two weeks prior to the elections, becoming perhaps the only openly anti-Putin party. But this did the party no good. The new strategy was a symptom of desperation; the pressure put on by the authorities made it virtually impossible for SPS to conduct a proper election campaign. The party’s aggressive tactics were, by and large, futile. And it couldn’t be otherwise because, objectively speaking, SPS sympathizers are more or less satisfied with the state of affairs under Vladimir Putin. They wouldn’t protest for the sake of protesting, and few people are roused by the slogan of fighting against a single-party system. And finally, the liberals were pathetically disorganized and lacked a charismatic popular leader.
Even Yabloko, one of Russia’s oldest parties, failed miserably, even though the authorities did not attack it as they did SPS. Yabloko did not overcome the 7 percent barrier in a single Russian region, including the federal cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the party had won at least twice as many votes during the previous Duma elections.
Half a dozen small parties, such as the Agrarian Party and the Democratic Party, which are also known as “spoiler parties,” did not seriously influence the election results. The liberal “spoilers,” such as Mikhail Barshchevsky’s Civic Force, will not even have the right to claim the dubious honor of having precluded SPS from entering the Duma. Their meager 1 percent makes no difference. Nationalist “spoilers,” such as the Patriots of Russia, detracted a negligible number of votes from the Communists. Their participation doesn’t count. Most likely, the authorities will realize the futility of such tactics and we will have even fewer parties during the next parliamentary elections.
Interestingly enough, United Russia’s victorious 64 percent curiously coincides with the forecasts and guidelines given by the Kremlin’s political consultants at the very beginning of the election campaign, when President Vladimir Putin decided to head United Russia’s ticket.
The main question now is what the party should do with this impressive result. Some observers are saying that United Russia’s victory endows the party, as well as President Putin, with additional legitimacy, which they should use to their advantage.
I believe that the very notion of legitimacy, as it is traditionally understood, is not applicable to the Russian legislature because in the course of Russia’s post-Soviet history, the parliament either did not decide anything at all or dealt only with secondary issues. Only the executive has real power in this country, while the authority of formal, written laws is inevitably undermined by informal customs, personal agreements and the tradition of out-and-out corruption.
In light of this, the fact that United Russia has secured a constitutional majority in the Duma means little for the future of Russian politics. The previous Duma could just as easily have changed the constitution, if only the country’s leader had wanted it. United Russia is completely dependent on the will of a single person and incapable of pursuing any independent legislative agenda. The party doesn’t have any projects of social or economic reform separate from those coming down from the Kremlin and will not have them for a very long time.
I do not believe that United Russia’s triumph will have any bearing on the name of Vladimir Putin’s successor, should the president even nominate one. Putin will be motivated by other considerations, the most important of which will be to ensure stability within the ruling elite after he leaves the office of president. United Russia’s constitutional majority is no guarantee of such stability.
Too much significance should not be assigned to these parliamentary elections, and likewise, there should be no dramatic mourning over the crushing defeat of all those forces that claim to be in opposition to the regime. After all, there isn’t a single precedent in contemporary political history in any country demonstrating the defeat of a ruling party when the country’s GDP is growing seven percent year on year and its citizens’ average income steadily increased by ten percent for several years in a row. If economic conditions are favorable, people usually don’t care who represents them in parliament.
Georgy Bovt is a Moscow-based political analyst. |
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