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| 21 августа, 2013

Cities Hand Over Power

Vedomosti Publicqtion

By Liliya Biryukova

Today the Foundation for Civil Society Development, headed by the former head of the Kremlin’s Political Department Konstantin Kostin, presented its latest report ‘2013 Elections of Governors and heads of Regional Administrative Centres: campaign scenarios and forecasts.’

On 8^th September, Mayors will be elected in eight administrative centres. The majority of the campaigns will be of the ‘referendum’ type where the pro-government candidates’ success is ensured, say the authors of the report. Such a situation arose for example in Abakan and Khabarovsk. The current city leaders – Nikolai Bulakin and Alexander Sokolov – are political heavyweights. In Vladivostok, Vologda and Petrozavodsk the elections were also a foregone conclusion, although some ‘competitive’ campaigns showed some potential.

According to the report, ‘competitive’ elections will be held in Voronezh and Yekaterinburg. In Voronezh the ‘Green Alliance’ candidate, Galina Kudryavtseva, Deputy of the regional Duma has a good chance of winning. In the 2008 elections she came second with 16.1 percent of the vote. The report claims that this situation arose when the Mayor Sergei Kolukhin resigned in March and Gennadii Chernuchkin, founder of the furniture holding ‘Angstrem’ was appointed as acting Mayor by loyal governor, Alexei Gordeev. However he failed to win the required support and popularity so it was decided to change the candidate and ‘United Russia’ nominated Vice-Governer Alexander Gusev who had never previously engaged in public politics. His campaign was launched only in July however, and he has strong competitors – including Konstantin Ashifin, a City Duma deputy for the Communist Party.

The most intriguing campaign of all will take place in Yekaterinburg: the city head there does not lead the city administration but presides instead over the city Duma. This difficult situation has arisen because of a long-standing conflict between the local and the regional authorities, according the report. The leader of the city team is Deputy Mayor Vladimir Tungusov who does not have a good rapport with the present Governor Yevgeni Kuivashev. (He also had a poor relationship with Kuivashev’s predecessors.)

The campaign battle has its ‘ups and downs’ say the Foundation experts. With Moscow’s help, Kuivashev was made ‘the only candidate’ for the post of head of his deputy, Yakov Silin. Meanwhile Tungusov’s team are more interested in elections to the City Duma (appointed by the City Manager.) However Silin has some strong competition: State Duma deputy Alexander Burkov of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR) is popular in the region (The SR Party beat the United Russia Party in elections to the State Duma in Yekaterinburg by 27,3 percent to 25,9 percent) and also Yevgeny Roizman, founder of the ‘City without Drugs’ Foundation who comes from a ‘Civic Platform.’ According to the report Burkov is acceptable to the city team which will make it easier to negotiate with Royzman (the latter has a bad relationship with the governor because of the criminal prosecution of his girlfriend Aksana Panova.) Burkov also faces two ‘dead squibs’ from the Communist Party of Social Justice and the Labour Party of Russia.

Those close to the administration in the region and to the Kremlin, quickly admitted that the nomination of Royzman was favourable to the authorities because he poached some of Burkov’s voters. Burkov was rated ahead of Silin in some city districts. However, a regional official admitted that Royzman himself is now ahead of Silin. According to him, it is the city itself which is responsible for the campaign and will be responsible for any possible defeat. Vedomosti’s source says that some people believe that if Burkov withdrew from the race, his voting base could then displace Silin (the option of Royzman being pushed out of the race is not viable). But so far the SR candidate has not come to an agreement on this.

Burkov admits that the proposal to withdraw his nomination has been discussed, but he refused – after all he is still compiling a list of Parties in the city Duma. He believes that the local authorities have now lost control over Royzman who, with the help of his friends in ‘Uralmash’, has been able to raise enough campaign funds to periodically place him at the top of the ratings.

Vitalii Ivanov, an expert in the Foundation acknowledges that the situation in Yekaterinburg is very dynamic: after all the fight for first place is between three, not two main candidates. He believes that the mayors of Voronezh and Yekaterinburg are partly to blame for the situation: Gordeev wanted ‘his own’ mayor, but could not find a strong enough candidate, and Kuivashev took a confrontational attitude towards the city without having sufficient backup. As a result, this conflict could lead to unpredictable results. The situation could have been resolved through a public coalition with a strong competitor – withdrawing him and then giving him a similar post - says Ivanov.