Churov & Election 2012

The head of Russia’s Central Elections Commission Vladimir Churov came out to talk to Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) on Thursday.  He once again defended his role as Commissioner by claiming very little fraud occurred in the December Duma elections.

Churov also repeated his claim that they are preparing to install transparent ballot boxes in 30,000 polling stations across Russia for the March Presidential Elections.  This is only about 1/3 of all polling stations.  The Commission is also working on setting up webcams in “nearly all polling stations”, though Churov gave no indication of what “nearly all” actually equals to as a concrete number.

While Ekho Moskvy, and its audience, got nothing really new from the interview, it was interesting to witness the effort that the Kremlin is making to explain themselves.  Ekho Moskvy appeals to a very specific audience, the educated, liberal, middle class.  Many of its listeners are the same people who attended the mass meetings on Bolotnaya, and Sakharova in December.

But what does Churov’s interview mean for the coming Presidential election?  I am still not convinced that the Kremlin has decided on a strategy, but I have some ideas.

According to the most recent poll from VTsIOM, if the election had been held on 25 December 2011, Vladimir Putin would have gotten 45% of the vote.  Even though Putin’s next closest rival, Communist Party Leader Gennady Zyuganov, received only 10% of the vote, Putin would still be 6 percentage points under the required amount to prevent a run-off.

At this point, Putin, and his campaign team, have a few options.  They can stick with their current strategy, campaign mildly, and get the approximate amount the VTsIOM poll shows (give or take a couple points).  They would then be forced into a run-off with Zyuganov, where Putin would probably win in a landslide.

Another option would be to take a small win in the first round.  This would be something over 51%, but under 60%.  However, this is risky because of the amount of perceived fraud that took place in the Parliamentary elections last month.  A small win could be within an arguable margin of error, and lead to more protests.

The last option would be to take a large win in the first round (say 65%, for a round number).  This is also a risk because the larger win could be indicative of massive fraud, and could also force more protests.

As far as I can tell, these are the choices that are open.  Do you have other ideas?  What would you choose?

United Russia’s Prospects for the 2011 Duma Election

Even Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO apologized for the poor timing of the announcement.  While Rogozin’s Twitter comment may have been a joke, Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement yesterday was not.  Looking nervously at the camera, the President of Russia stated that he was instructing the military to ramp up, and prepare for a missile defense shield in Europe.  Speaking slowly and clearly, Medvedev also threatened to place Iskanders in Kaliningrad.

This was the second time in as many days that Medvedev had come out with a big defense announcement.  On Monday, at a meeting in Vladikavkaz, the President had claimed that the 2008 war in Georgia had been carried out in an attempt to prevent Georgian ascension to NATO.  While the threats and posturing are nothing new, the timing did seem a bit suspicious.  The elections for the State Duma are in 10 days, and the Russian President is leading the party lists for United Russia, the majority party.

For the leading party, United Russia, the numbers do not look promising.  In the last few weeks there have been several leaks about how badly United Russia is doing in the polls. Levada Center, the leading polling organization in Russia, revealed the results of its most recent poll.  Levada takes this poll on a monthly basis, and always asks the same question: “If the election for the Russian State Duma was held next Sunday, would you vote in them, and which party would you vote for?”

Levada’s most recent results revealed that United Russia’s numbers are falling, with just 51% of their respondents answering that they would vote for United Russia.  In the same poll, the Communists would get 20% of the vote.  Sergei Mironov’s party would get only 7%, and LDPR (Zhirinovsky’s party) would receive 14%.

Compare this to the other polling organizations in Russia, VTsIOM, and FOM.  VTsIOM’s most recent poll only gives United Russia 40%, and FOM gives United Russia 39%.  Both organizations give the Communists 13%.

To give you an idea of how bad this is, United Russia currently holds 64.3% of the seats in the State Duma.  The authorities are patently worried.  In early November the President’s office leaked their own internal poll numbers.  These numbers were closer to VTsIOM’s numbers.  The leak appeared to be deliberate.  A portrayal of weakness from people who do not normally like to appear weak.

So the numbers are bad, and different regions have sought to make up those numbers using “administrative resources”.  This has, so far, included pressuring the clergy to urge their congregants to vote for United Russia, publishing posters with the same background as the Election Commission’s posters, and hanging up posters in public schools.

Stories have also leaked that governors’ jobs are on the line, if they fail to produce a certain result. In Novgorod, recent poll numbers placed United Russia at 40%, but fail to take into account regions like Chechnya where Ramzan Kadyrov has promised to deliver “110% of the vote”.  While most people have treated Kadyrov’s oath as a joke, in the 2007 election, Chechnya did deliver over 90% of the vote to United Russia.

Utilizing so-called “administrative resources”, and with help from Governors anxious to keep their jobs, United Russia could still potentially receive 60% of the seats in the next parliamentary session.  While this is not a Constitutional majority, it would enable the ruling party, and Vladimir Putin to claim a mandate.  A necessity if they intend to follow through on their “modernization” platform.  And, perhaps more importantly, a necessity for Putin to shore up support for the Presidential elections scheduled in March.

Marina Litvinovich

has created a website called Election 2012.  On it she looks at members of the Russian Government, their ties to one another, their ties to big business/oligarchs, their past associations with the business community, etc.  It’s all very interesting, and I am hoping that it will aid my own research, and serve to make this blog better.

Happy reading.

Kudrin vs Sechin

There has been a story floating in and out of Russian politics for a while regarding former Finance Minister and Deputy PM Alexei Kudrin.  It went like this: Kudrin was the leader of the economic liberals, and a counter-balance to Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, and his clan, the siloviki.

And, the narrative continued, Alexei Kudrin was the only person preventing the siloviki from dipping into the pot of money called the Stabilization Fund (a kind of rainy-day investment portfolio created for when oil prices dropped). The siloviki, the rumour mill alleged, wanted to use the money to improve infrastructure.  Finance Minister Kudrin, however, wanted to keep that money safe for its intended use: riding out any future financial crisis.

After Kudrin’s dramatic exit on Monday (video here; and English transcript here), I’ve started to wonder if the story was all fake: something that Kudrin made up and then leaked in order to make himself seem more powerful in the eyes of the West.

We may never know, but it will be interesting to see if Putin ends up authorising any withdraws from the Fund in the coming months.

P.S. I do have some reactions to the decision of the Tandem to swap, but after poring over so many others’ reactions, I may just end up doing a summary.

Reshuffling

After Poltavchenko’s move to Petersburg this week, and with rumours of another reshuffle taking place soon (either before or after the elections), the thought occurred to me: what if every time you reshuffle, your group gets weaker?  It doesn’t matter how small the reshuffle is.  Even if you only lose one person, you still have to move three people (or more) to make it all work.  For example, they lost Mironov.  And to replace him, they had to lose Matviyenko, who was then replaced by Poltavchenko, who will be replaced by… and it keeps going.  But every time you do that, you lose trust.  Trust that has to be rebuilt.  And that takes time.  If you reshuffle on a regular basis, the trust never really gets rebuilt to its previous point, because there isn’t enough time to rebuild it.  So that every time you reshuffle, your group becomes less cohesive, and therefore weaker.

United Russia

United Russia is still in the process of holding their “primaries” in order to create their party lists for their big conference in September (as far as I can determine, this is something like National Conventions in the US, but probably not as fun).  The Moscow Times had a piece today outlining how the primaries are going, but the process is so convoluted and confusing that it is a wonder anyone follows it.  But that might be the point, to make it so confusing that people don’t want to follow it.

Anyway, it raised a few questions in my mind, not the least of which is this: if Deputy PM Igor Sechin is actually running for a seat in the Duma (which I still think is slightly shady, to say the least), does that mean he is a member of United Russia?  I know that something like 5 members of the Russian Government are registered members of United Russia, but I’ve never been able to quite pin down who those 5 (or so) people are.

• Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik (maybe);
• Deputy PM Vyacheslav Volodin (was a member before becoming Deputy PM, and never resigned, I think);
• MChS Minister Sergei Shoigu (supposedly a founding member);
• Vladimir Putin (apparently still is not a member, but in charge, anyway… whatever);
• Deputy PM Dmitry Kozak (I think);
• Deputy PM Alexander Zhukov (actually, I am pretty sure that he is a member);
• Sergei Sobyanin (might have been, but he doesn’t count anymore because he’s Mayor of Moscow)…

Obviously, my list is incomplete, and full of holes.

I wonder if it bothers Putin and Co that we laugh at them behind our hands (and sometimes more publicly) for the mockery they continue to make of themselves.  But how can anyone actually take them seriously?  And at this point, why do they even bother?  I know the answer, of course, legitimacy.  But how much legitimacy can you have when you act in this manner?

EDIT: Slon.ru had a piece this morning (or morning my time, anyway) on the illegality of allowing members of the Government to participate in the Putin’s Peoples Front (or ONF).  The article actually names names.  The names include the ones I named previously, and a few more that I missed:

• Minister of Natural Resources Yuri Trutnev (who is running in the primaries, as far as I know); and
• First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov.

No Commentary

This next piece needs to be shared in its entirety without any of my own opinions attached to it, I think.  The only thing I will say is that Andrei Piontkovsky’s ending prediction came as something of a surprise.

A fundamental difference between developments in Russia 20 years ago and in Central Europe and the Baltic countries is that Russia has never had a democratic revolution.

The driving force of change was the ruling nomenklatura, which conceived and implemented a plan to convert its absolute collective political power into huge financial power for its individual members.

All the golden dreams of the Communist Party and KGB nomenklatura, which launched perestroika in the mid-1980s, have come true by now. What have they achieved as a result of this 20-year period? The total concentration of political power, just as before, but with huge personal fortunes they could not even have imagined and a completely different lifestyle (in Moscow’s exclusive Rublyovka neighborhood, Courchevel, or Sardinia).

Most importantly, the rulers no longer have any social and historical responsibility. Now they do not need to howl in unison: “The purpose of our life is ordinary people’s happiness.” They were sick of that hypocrisy. Now they repeat matter-of-factly that the purpose of their lives is “the continuation of market reforms” and “getting Russia off its knees,” though none of them believes that or even knows what it means. The regime has promised the people to take “unpopular but necessary measures” for 20 (!) consecutive years of reform as it was implementing measures very popular among a handful of people and aimed at their personal enrichment.

The history of authoritarian regimes succeeding one another in Russia reveals a pattern – they do not die from external blows of fate or attacks by their opponents. They tend to die suddenly of a strange sort of internal disease – the irresistible existential disgust for themselves, their own exhaustion and what Sartre described as the nausea (la nausée) of existence.

Today we are witnessing the Putin regime, which paved the political space with asphalt, waste away from the same chronic disease. The simulacrum of a big ideological style, it could hardly avoid such a fate. In its short biography of one decade it went through all the classic stages of Soviet history only to become a vulgar parody of each of them.

Soviet communism took 40 years to die. Simulacra collapse much faster because they lack any organic matter.

One distinction of Nausea 2011 is that the leadership suffering from it has no project for the future. It can only lose. Yes, of course, many would like to put an end to the excesses of the national leader and his Tonton Macoutes destructive to the object of their power and the source of their wealth.

But the will of our glamorous haves is paralyzed not so much by fear of the alpha male still roaring menacingly, but by the prospect of being left alone without this male to face the alien and silent community of have-nots.

Thus conscience does make cowards of them all …

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

The elite’s unresolved nausea and the burnt-out political space beyond it stop Russia’s historical time, turning it into a sticky and dreary eternity.

Putin’s eternity is the black hole of Russian history, Svidrigailov’s rustic smoky sauna with swollen spiders creeping at the corners, veterans of the KGB’s Dresden field station, and the members of the Ozero dacha cooperative.

The ruling corporation has no people or ideas, or even desires. For them Francis Fukuyama’s end of history came a long time ago. Time stands still in the viscous eternity and our original Eurasian pride – the vertically structured government – is about to collapse to form yet another black hole of Russian history for the third time in less than a century.

The solemn inauguration of Putin as the Father of the Nation on 8 May 2012 for the third and, in fact, life term will be a control shot to Russia’s head. In the coming decade, events will evolve rapidly along a trajectory predetermined by the lack of freedom and steady destruction of the nation’s gene pool for centuries.

The control shot will trigger the final wave of emigration of professionals and talented young people (5 to 7 million of them) from Russia.

After their departure, science, education, and health care will finally crumble. The continuing plunder by Putin’s gang of KGB agents/raw materials traders and the Yeltsin-era oligarchs who have sworn fealty to them will lead in 2013 or 2014 to the collapse of the financial system, a sharp depreciation of the ruble, pension fund bankruptcy, and mass unemployment.

North Caucasian republics, starting with Chechnya, will finally break away from ailing Russia after they stop receiving tribute. The government will not dare to use force to retain them for fear of terrorist attacks by Islamists.

Spontaneous protests by disadvantaged people will begin in various provinces of the country. The regime will use force, like Syria’s dictator, in an attempt to quell riots.

In the end, Putin will find himself in a hopeless situation and will be overthrown in 2015 in a Romania-1989-style military coup.

After taking power, the military will try to rely on nationalist sentiment, which will lead to a rise of separatism in the remaining ethnic regions and overt political, economic, and possibly military pressure from China on Russia’s Far East and Siberia.

In 2016 and 2017, the Chinese will establish two puppet Russian-Chinese states, the Far Eastern Republic and the Republic of Siberia.

In 2018, the Baltic region, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Karelia will break away from Russia. In 2019, central Russian regions will ask for accession to Ukraine, which will have concluded an agreement on associated membership in the EU by that time.

Lengthy negotiations, including on the fate of the residual nuclear capabilities of the once-great power, the status of the Russian language, and the interpretation of World War II history, will end in the resurrection in 2021 of the bilingual Slavic state of Kievan Rus destroyed by the Mongols nearly a thousand years ago.

Ken Doll Putin

I’ve given up imagining what VVP will think of for his next PR stunt.  In one sense, it is getting a little ridiculous.  But on the other hand… VVP exploring ancient caves AND diving for treasure (albeit in 2 meter deep water)!!!  How can it get better?  My doll “action figure” Putin keeps getting more outfits.  It’s like having a Ken doll (h/t Ani), but way cooler, right?

And then, SuperPutin Episode II came out last night.  I was literally on my floor laughing until I started to cry.

So things are looking up as the election season (finally) starts.  Substance may be lacking, but the PR stunts will definitely make up for some of that.

Question:

Is this Misha Prokhorov’s campaign strategy?  If it is, I’m not convinced it is a good one, and I don’t see it ending well.  But maybe he just wants to get his name out there.  In that case, it may actually work.  He’ll just need to move from place to place accusing officials of conspiring against him.

Facebook Page

I’ve started a Facebook page to share some articles, pictures, and videos that I find.  It is also called Putinania.  I hope that you will check it out, and comment on it, and share your own thoughts, and ideas.

Retirement

Alexei Kudrin & Co (Deputy Finance Minister Shatalov, specifically) are still pushing for a gradual increase in the retirement age.  Shatalov was on Ekho Moskvy on Tuesday trying to promote this among the population that listens to EM (any ideas on their demographic?).  Apparently, Alexei Leonidovich is getting frustrated with the lack of movement on this issue.  Of course, in an election cycle, the subject is the 3^rd rail, as we like to say in the US, and why would a person with a populist agenda (Putin, in case you were wondering) want to touch it?

Duma Election Update

Levada Center has come out with its latest poll numbers.  The numbers should come as no surprise.  Everyone is staying pretty steady in the polls.  I’ll break it down for you, anyway.

• United Russia (Party of Crooks, and Thieves) is up one percentage point from last month at 54%.
• Coming in second are the Communists with 18% (up one percentage point from last month).
• Third place goes to LDPR at 12% (down one percentage point).
• A Just Russia trails at 7% (up two points from last month).
• And Misha Prokhorov’s party (so much easier to remember than it’s real name, Right Cause) got 2% in the Levada poll.

Quite frankly, these numbers are all a little sad.  United Russia’s numbers are pitiful when compared to the previous election.  But I have a feeling that there are a few announcements coming that will make this election a bit more exciting.

First, Prokhorov is planning a big PR campaign starting next month.  I haven’t heard any details yet, but will be sure to share when I find out more.  This will, I think, get his name out there, and help his poll numbers.

Second, United Russia have postponed their congress until late September (this may turn into Gazprom: Part 2).  The congress is supposed to finalise United Russia’s platform (something that I’m still not sure they have), and decide who will head the party list.  Apparently, according to RIA Novosti, United Russia is hoping that Putin will head their list.

So some exciting things may be coming, but all in all, I think that this election cycle will be pretty bland, and predictable.

At least there are always the competing Putin Medvedev posters scattered around Moscow to keep us entertained.

VTsIOM Poll

VTsIOM conucted a poll recently on the members of the Government, and I was kind of surprised by the results.

First of all, Sergei Shoigu has the highest approval rating of anyone in the government (people were not asked about Putin).  I have mixed feelings about Shoigu.  He has held the post of Emergency Situations Minister since Boris Yeltsin came to power.  On the one hand, I feel like he must be doing something right, and his approval rating has always been pretty high.  But then yesterday’s incident makes me pause to think.  His solution to the Bulgaria tragedy is to put black boxes in all boats.  What?  That’s his response?  Quite frankly, the man has never been good in an “emergency” (Beslan, Dubrovka, etc.), and I’m still not sure where he is getting such high numbers.  Unless people are just saying that they like him because they know who he is (he has been in the Government since 1991, after all).  That’s the only thing I can come up with anyway.  Also, presumably, the poll was conducted before the Bulgaria tragedy.

Here are some more numbers:

• Sergei Lavrov — 47% approval rating.  Okay, I’ll buy that.  He’s one of the most public figures of the Government since he is the head diplomat.
• Sergei Ivanov — 32% approve of the job he’s doing (or have heard of him, anyway).

And the lows are:

• Andrei Fursenko — 50% disapprove of the job he is doing.  Hardly suprising since he’s the face of education “reform”, and most teachers are upset about it.
• Tatiana Golikova — 41% disapprove of the job she is doing.  What is she doing, anyway?  I don’t even know.
• Alexei Kudrin — 34% disapprove of the job he is doing.  Well, he’s not exactly populist, is he?  And I doubt he’s really out to win any popularity contests.  But then none of these people are, are they?  Their job doesn’t depend on what the general populace think of them.  It only depends on what Putin and Medvedev think of them, and their work.

Some other numbers:

• 75% of people don’t know who Igor Sechin is;
• 72% don’t know who Vyacheslav Volodin is; and
• 71% have never heard of Igor Shuvalov.

I was a little shocked when I saw those numbers, but I bet if you asked Americans the same questions about their Government, they would say the same thing.

My 2012 Election Predictions

There is probably not a good way to say this beyond the absolute, blunt truth: Putin is bored.  He hates being PM, and I am not sure that anyone could, or should, blame him for it.  Putin has essentially been Mr Russia for the last 3 years and some odd months.  Even Miss America is only Miss America for one year, and there is a reason for it.  That reason is, of course, that she’d go stark, staring mad if she had to do it for longer.

Kudrin for PM?

This WSJ article showed up in my Google Reader this morning (several days late), and since I am following the so-called elections pretty closely, I thought it would be an appropriate lead in to some things I’ve been thinking about.

Here is what the article claims:

Several members of Moscow’s elite business and economic circles have suggested that Mr. Putin may run for president and, when he’s inaugurated, select longtime Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as the country’s next prime minister.

I can see why this alternative would be attractive to people, particularly investors (as the article says later).  I personally am a huge fan of Alexei Leonidovich.

But here is why this is wrong: first of all, the qualities that make Kudrin a good excellent MinFin are not necessarily the qualities that are needed for PM: “…he is seen as a fiscally conservative, clearheaded technocrat with an almost single-minded focused on reining in budget spending.”

If Kudrin were PM under Medvedev, it would be more believable (you need someone conservative to kind of hold Medvedev back, I think).  But as a balance to Putin, which is this author’s premise, Kudrin would not be a good choice.

Also, lest we forget, Igor Sechin is the counter-balance to Kudrin, and putting Kudrin over Sechin would not really mesh with the way VVP “leads”.

So that’s where I am going with this.

P.S. I really am going to write the piece about the Presidency, I swear!