События и комментарии экспертов фонда
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| 28 декабря, 2012 | | | Читать на сайте издания |
There will be just a little bit nervous
'Trud' daily publication
We will see rapid party building and street politics becoming commonplace in 2013.
Konstantin Kostin, Chairman of the Board of the Fund for the development of civil society answers questions on the rapid growth of political parties and street politics becoming commonplace.
Kostin answers questions such as: what trends are we seeing emerging in society? How might adopted laws be overturned? What will become of the declining protest movement today? What new policies are looming on the Russian horizon?
‘Over the next year we will see the first practical results of political reform.
Firstly we will see a period of rapid party-building – we already have 40 registered parties and the Ministry of Justice is considering around 200 more applications. We will therefore see many new faces appearing in Russian politics.
Secondly, next year, elections will be held in a single day of voting: on September 8th the people will go to the polls in over 70 regions in the Russian Federation. 8 of them will be electing a governor and 17 of them a regional Duma representative.
Generally speaking ‘United Russia’ still holds the strongest position at all levels in the elections. One can say with confidence that the representatives of this party can now be seen as favourites in most of the elections for governors. But there are areas which will be more competitive – particularly for heads of municipalities and posts in the Legislative Assembly. The main competitors to UR will be the communists and in some places the representatives of ‘Fair Russia.’
It is already clear that certain elections are going to attract a lot of interest, particularly in the Moscow region where Governor Andei Vorobyov for example will face a number of strong opponents. It also seems clear that Gennady Gudkov will be the only candidate from the ‘intransigent’ opposition. Similarly, the CPRF and ‘Civil Force’ party will be fielding resourceful candidates (such as Mikhail Prokhorov for ‘Civil Force’.)
The situation in the Vladimir and Trans-Baikal regions will also be interesting because the regional leaders here have not been replaced and the inhabitants are weary of their policies. It should also be mentioned that ‘United Russia’ has a poor electoral history in the Irkutsk region for positions in the Legislative Assembly and so next year elections in this region will be hard for them to win. It will also not be easy for party leaders in the Yaroslavl region to win elections. Similarly, elections to appoint city leaders to the Dumas in Volgograd and Voronezh also promise to be interesting.
One notable feature of the new political season is that existing members of parliament will continue to be favourites in the election campaigns. But at the same time many well established parties – for example ‘Yabloko,’ ‘Just Cause’, ‘Patriots of Russia’ etc will find themselves being squeezed out by the new players. Moreover regional campaigns at a federal level will be a good springboard for increased competitiveness in Russian politics.
In 2012 street politics will become commonplace although the wave of protest has subsided. Of course we will see some meetings and processions but they will not even remotely resemble the events of last winter in the number or composition of participants. The only practical result of the past mass meetings was the formation of a core protest movement of around 5,000 people. This movement will of course have its place- but more as a fact of life - rather than as a political force.
To date, our non-systemic opposition finds itself at a crossroads: should they continue to ignore electoral procedures and slide into a marginal role? Or get busy building up their parties and trying to fight for votes at the elections?
