DIZZY FROM FAILURES

Abstract

(By Ivan Davydov. The New Times, May 16, 2016, p. 22. Complete text:) By early May, it became unequivocally clear that the Democratic Coalition based on the Republican Party of Russia/People’s Freedom Party (RPR/PFP) had collapsed [see Current Digest, Vol. 68, No. 17, p. 9]. The scheming of the insidious Kremlin is by far not the only cause. There is let-up in government pressure on the opposition. For example, the Prosecutor [General’s] Office has sent letters to the companies where Aleksei Navalny, a leader of the Democratic Coalition who subsequently played a significant role in its disintegration, is a minority shareholder, requesting information about [his] unlawful actions [see Current Digest, Vol. 68, No. 18, p. 13]. The family business of Ivan Nesterenko, a friend of Navalny’s, is being audited corruption and involvement in it. On May 13, Navalny and Anticorruption Fund employees were detained by the police for no apparent reason and later released. However, even this obvious persecution is excuse for rash political moves. ... Naturally, the collapse of the coalition means a decline in potential voters’ trust in the nonestablishment opposition; lost time that the failed [2016 State Duma] candidates will have to make up for if they want to make any showing for themselves at all in the parliamentary campaign; and diminishing chances of seeing deputies with an independent position in the seventh State Duma convocation. ... On Feb. 27, 2015, RPR/PFP cochairman Boris Nemtsov was killed in Moscow [see Current Digest, Vol. 67, No. 9 - 10, pp. 3 - 5]. It was after his death that a number of opposition politicians attempted to unite anti-Kremlin movements ahead of a major election cycle: Elections to the legislative assemblies of 11 regions were to take place in fall 2015, and State Duma elections in fall 2016. The situation that oppositionists found themselves in before the start of coalition talks can be described as a crisis: The [Moscow] protests that had so greatly impressed the Kremlin in 2011 and 2012 [see Current Digest, Vol. 63, No. 50, pp. 7 - 11; No. 51 - 52, pp. 7 - 10; and Vol. 64, No. 6, pp. 6 - 9] had effectively fizzled out. Amid the euphoria after the Crimea [annexation; see Current Digest, Vol. 66, No. 12, pp. 3 - 11] and other geopolitical successes, Vladimir Putin’s [approval] ratings were steadily growing. The overwhelming majority of the population definitely supported the authorities in all of their endeavors. Not counting establishment opposition parties and Yabloko, which is notorious for its uncompromising position, what the nonestablishment opposition had on its side were several parties whose names and platforms were confusing even to their followers, as well as a handful of politicians with national name recognition. The coalition offered a chance to overcome the crisis, and contrary to Russian political tradition, the opposition managed to come to terms. ... On April 17, 2015, the RPR/PFP, led by Mikhail Kasyanov, and Aleksei Party of Progress signed an agreement to form a coalition [see Current Digest, Vol. 67, No. 17, p. 11]. On April 20, they were joined by the Democratic Choice (Vladimir Milov) and Civil Initiative (Andrei Nechayev), as well as by the unregistered December 5 Party and the Libertarian Party. Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia declared its support for the Democratic Coalition. ... Right after the coalition was formed, Aleksei Navalny said that its participants had no intention to wear out the seats of their pants at roundtables and had their sights set on genuine political battle. The Democratic Coalition said it intended to participate in regional elections and announced its priority regions. It also said it was willing to draw up candidate lists based on the results of primary elections. ... And this is what caused the first split. Civil Initiative refused to participate in the primaries in Kaluga Province. Officially, it was announced that Civil Initiative’s position in Kaluga was very strong, while the RPR/PFP might encounter serious pushback from the authorities. Unofficially, sources within the party asserted that Nechayev did not want to take any risks by competing with Navalny’s people in the primaries. Granted, as it turned out later, none of that made much difference: Every voter signature collected by Nechayev’s party was invalidated by the electoral commission on technicalities. ... Still, the Democratic Coalition went ahead with the primaries, even though there was not much voter enthusiasm in any of the regions. Nevertheless, in all the three regions where coalition participants planned to run for elections - Novosibirsk, Kaluga and Kostroma - electoral commissions also invalidated the voters’ signatures, citing technical and often preposterous reasons [see Current Digest, Vol. 67, No. 31, pp. 3 - 6]. It took the personal intervention of Vyacheslav Volodin, the presidential aide in charge of domestic politics, who was concerned about the legitimacy of elections, to get the decision revised in just one region: Kostroma Province.