DATE=12/22/1999 TYPE=ON THE LINE TITLE=ON THE LINE: RUSSIA AFTER THE ELECTIONS NUMBER=1-00807 EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY - 619-0037 CONTENT= THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE Anncr: On the Line - a discussion of United States policy and contemporary issues. This week, "Russia After the Elections" Here is your host, Robert Reilly. Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line. Russians went to the polls last week to elect representatives to the Duma, or parliament. The results seem to have loosened the grip of the Communist Party, though the Communists retained the single largest share of seats. Unity, a centrist alliance backing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, came in a close second. In fact, for the first time, it appears that a centrist coalition could exercise a plurality or even a majority in the Duma. Joining me today to discuss the Russian elections are three experts. Nelson Ledsky is the director of programs for Eurasia at the National Democratic Institute for International affairs. Paul Goble is communications director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. And Herman Pirchner is president of the American Foreign Policy Council. Welcome to the program. Mr. Ledsky, before we remark upon how the shift within the Duma may affect the future of Russia, what about the conduct of the election itself? Ledsky: These were not, by my standards at least, and I think by most people's standards, very good elections. The run-up to the election was marred by heavy mud-slinging, and there was heavy mud. Host: Unlike other democracies? Ledsky: Unlike other democracies and unlike previous Russian elections. Very few of the candidates had the opportunity to present their views to the public. The Kremlin and Kremlin figures had the lion's share of press play, dominated the pre-electoral period. And I would say myself that this election was less free, less fair than previous Duma elections and previous presidential elections in Russia. Host: That's interesting. Paul Goble, Gary Kasparov, the famous Russian chess master and political commentator, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that these are probably the fairest elections that Russia has had for the Duma. Goble: I think that we have to distinguish between the run up to the elections and the way in which they were conducted on the day of the elections. In the run-up, there was a great deal of Kremlin pressure on the media, a lot of mud- slinging, as Nelson says, and it was very ugly and there was clearly an effort by the party in power to make sure it won. On the day of the elections, however, the reporting was that there were very few violations. It's important to remember that Russia's own central election commission commented that, before the day of the elections, things had not been too good. There had been large numbers of complaints. But on the day of the elections, they saw very few problems compared to earlier years. So I think it is important to make the distinction between the election campaign, which certainly was not fair and free, and the day of the elections, the actual conduct of the voting, which was not too bad. Host: So one can rely today in Russia, Herman Pirchner, on election votes being counted reliably, no one stuffing the ballot boxes, and getting an accurate count? Pirchner: I think that is a slight exaggeration, but it is within tolerable limits and maybe not unlike the conditions in some American cities earlier this century. Host: That's fair enough. Let us get on to that larger topic. We are hearing from a number of reformers in Russia that this is a peaceful revolution. Other commentators are saying it is simply the endorsement of a brutal war in Chechnya. What do you think? Ledsky: It is a little bit of both. I think there is no question that the war in Chechnya had a great impact on the results last Sunday. And I think the war in Chechnya tilted the electoral balance toward nationalists and toward centrists who were endorsing the war and away from reformers and perhaps away from Communists. Host: But the Communists are the new nationalists, aren't they? Ledsky: I think one has to be careful there with labels. One has to be careful about who is called a nationalist and who is called a centrist and who is called a revolutionary. And I do not think this was a revolutionary election. I do not think it was a very startling election in terms of results, except as an endorsement of a very brutal, a very unfortunate war effort which the Russian government has mounted. Host: Before commenting on what the results mean, let's first say what those results were. Pirchner: The Communist Party share of the Duma seats went down from thirty-four percent in 1995 to about twenty-five percent this time. They fared even worse when you look at their allies who were not reelected. Last time, other communist parties could pair with the Communist party to have forty- two percent of the vote, versus the combined Communist vote in the Duma this time at twenty- four percent. Centrist parties are up to thirty- three percent from fourteen. Democratic parties are down to eleven from fifteen percent. And maybe the most important statistic, you have a full twenty-five percent of the Duma that were elected as independents. Host: Then it sounds as if it might be possible for a non-Communist or anti-Communist majority to be formed. Pirchner: I think it is possible but not inevitable because we do not know where those independents will line up. Host: Paul Goble, why is that not a peaceful revolution, contrary to what Mr. Ledsky said? Goble: First off, Unity, the party of power, the party of the prime minister, is a very mixed bag. Its leaders have been unable to specify that they agree on anything except supporting the prime minister and supporting the war in Chechnya. They are likely to break apart. They are unlikely to show much party discipline. Moreover, the leader of one of the other parties that would be in the centrist faction, Mr. [Yevgeny] Primakov, has no reason to be terribly interested in helping Mr. Putin in the short term because he wants to defeat Putin in the race for president of Russia next year. So I think that, while you can theoretically construct a working majority for reform, the likelihood of that happening in the next year or two, or at least before that next presidential elections, is very low indeed. So I think the discussion that this is a revolutionary election is a vast overstatement of what has happened. Host: Do you agree with that? Ledsky: I do very much. I think we have had an election of great significance, but hardly a revolution. And what I think is important is that this is the third rather normal election for a parliament in a decade. And the very normalcy and lack of revolutionary character is what ought to be stressed. As for the categories in which the various parties competed and won should be put, I think that is a very big question. My own reading of the results is that the democrats or the reformers did very well. They did better than Herman indicated. I think they can be considered to have done somewhere around twenty to twenty- five percent of the vote. There will now be two small but very significant reformist blocs in the parliament, perhaps a third if you count former prime minister [Victor] Chernomyrdin with his seven to ten seats, which he will win. I think the democrats have substantially strengthened themselves and I think they will be far more influential than they were in the last parliament. And who is in the centrist category? There is where they big question mark is. Host: That sounds like a hedged peaceful revolution. Ledsky: No, no because this parliament is not going to be able to exercise the authority, the power that you would expect a parliament to be able to exercise, whatever its makeup. Host: Herman Pirchner, you have not had a chance to comment on the meaning of the results you gave. Pirchner: First, I have to disagree about the strength of the democratic forces. I would like to say that they are stronger, but [Grigory] Yavlinsky had ten percent of the seats in the last parliament. He has five percent now. In the last parliament, democratic splinter groups had five percent. They have nothing now. So the total democratic vote, among parties I think we would agree are democratic, is less by seats in this parliament. The meaning of the election, I do not know that I have serious disagreements with either Nelson or Paul on it, other than to say that I think, until we see how many of the unknown people line up and vote, we cannot know for sure. You have a quarter of your parliament that is independent and are largely unknown personalities. We do not know how they are going to vote. Goble: And more than that, three of the parties, which are represented in the parliament this time, did not exist a year ago. These are all new creations. The amount of agreement that exists within those parties is very difficult to gauge. And the likelihood that they will reform, as we move toward the presidential race in the year 2000, makes it very difficult to say: this is a party; it will vote this way; therefore we can count these people in any particular camp well in advance of a vote. Host: I understand that point. And it is certainly extraordinary that Unity, a party that has existed for only three months, did this well. However, what about the larger point that, since the change in Russia in 1991, the president, for all the power he has, has been unable to institute real tax reform, has been unable to pass laws allowing true land ownership. All of this because the Communist bloc of deputies has repeatedly blocked such reforms and such legislation. Now at the very least, wouldn't you expect, with the Communists in opposition, that the prime minister or the president could get through some fundamental economic reforms? Goble: There is certainly a better chance now of that happening than there was before this election, a better chance, but not a certainty. An awful lot of the people who are in these new umbrella parties are opposed to land reform, are opposed to those economic changes. One of the things is that we have three different issues, if you will, that people can take positions on: how much they are for democracy; how much they are for economic reform; and how nationalist they are. And the combinations of those three vary all over the place. You have some people who are nationalists and for economic reform. Some people who are nationalist oppose economic reform. Some people who are for economic reform oppose democracy, and you can work out all the permutations of that. As a result, if you look at the speeches in Unity, forget the leadership - the people in Unity - you are not going to be able to find a majority in Unity that is in favor of land reform just because the prime minister is in favor of it. There is going to be real politicking to get anything like that through, even with the Unity group. Host: So what was the Unity vote? What did that represent? Ledsky: It represented a vote of support for the prime minister of Russia and a vote of support for the war effort. And I do not think you can read much more into it than that. And I think the notion that we have not seen political and economic reform in Russia because of the makeup of the parliament is also a dubious assumption. Much of the reason you have the Russia today that you have is because of the nature of the executive, its lack of authority, its lack of decisiveness, its inability to carryout the reforms that it itself annunciates. So, you had a weak executive; you have had an ineffectual central government over the course of the last decade. And that, more than the makeup of the parliament, explains where Russia is at the present moment. Host: Do you agree with that? Goble: I think that is certainly true. I think what we have seen is the decay of almost all governing institutions, including a parliament. This is one more step in a process that is going to take a very long time of creating a government in Russia. Host: Is this a step in the right direction in that process? Goble: Well, unfortunately, I am a little less optimistic because I think this vote for Unity is explicitly about Chechnya and a vicious nationalist war. And I think that that may set Russia back. I think that the nationalism that is inherent in creating Unity support for Putin has a very dangerous shadow on the future of what Putin may do to try to build authority as he tries to become president of Russia. Host: Herman Pirchner, this statement by Mr. Ledsky that there has been a weak executive - everyone complained about the new Russian constitution because of all the power that vested in the executive. Pirchner: The question is not whether the weak executive was responsible in part for lack of reform. I agree with Nelson. The question is: is it the institution, is it the office, or is it a very sick President Yeltsin? Would an energetic president, using the constitutional powers of the president, be able to push through reforms or not? Host: Since you said, Mr. Ledsky, that this vote was for Prime Minister Putin, who exactly is he and why are people supporting him? A recent publication in St Petersburg described him as the man without a face. Ledsky: I think nobody knows the answer to that question. Certainly not I. I think the voters were presented with an image of a strong leader who is determined to carry out a nationalist policy and they voted for that individual on the assumption that he was a strong leader and was capable of carrying out a strong nationalist policy and concluding the war successfully in Chechnya. Whether any of that is realistic or not, I do not know. I do not think that any Russian who voted for the Unity group knows. You have to remember, however, that, when I said "what did the Unity vote signify?" and I answered that "it signified support for the war and support for the prime minister," only twenty-five percent of the Russian people voted for the prime minister and voted for the war. Host: What do you mean by that? Ledsky: Seventy-five percent of the vote went to other parties, other candidates. Host: But some of those support the war. Goble: Only one did not. Ledsky: Only Yabloko did not support the war, or only supported the war to a lesser extent than the others. It is impossible to know what will happen to that vote. What will happen to that sentiment? It depends on the course of the war; it depends on what the government does over the course of the next few months. Host: Herman Pirchner, you mentioned a weak executive in the person of a sick President Boris Yeltsin. Is Vladimir Putin the next president? Was this like the pre-primary vote? Is it a gauge of his prospects as a presidential candidate next summer? Pirchner: Democratic societies have a history of picking new presidents who most exemplify the traits deficient in the previous president. Host: Is Russia a democratic society? Pirchner: Yes. Therefore, an energetic, active young Putin is contrasted very favorably with a very sick, tired Yeltsin who could not solve the Chechen problem. I think that was his appeal. Goble: There is another analogy from democratic societies that may be relevant as well. Democracies tend to support the man in charge during a war. And as soon as the war is over, win or lose, that person is often cast aside. And I think that if the Chechen war goes badly, which I personally believe it will, I think that Mr. Putin is going to have a very rough next year. I think that a lot of people who supported him because he looked like he was winning will turn on him in a minute if the war goes sour. Host: But you also implied that if it goes well he'd suffer. Goble: If it goes well, I think that there are lots of people who will say, yes, this man fought a war, but, as Mr. Primakov has pointed out, Mr. Putin has failed utterly to come up with a policy about anything else except fighting the war. And I think that the people will be looking to other interests -- the seventy-five percent, as Nelson said, who voted for other parties. So I do not think this guarantees Putin's election at all. Pirchner: I agree and the Kremlin has similar thoughts. There is a whole "B" team that is run by some high level Yeltsin personnel that is preparing [former prime minister Sergei] Stepashin to run if Putin collapses because of Chechnya. Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have this week. I would like to thank our guests -- Nelson Ledsky from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; Paul Goble from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; and Herman Pirchner from the American Foreign Policy Council -- for joining me to discuss the results of the elections in Russia. This is Robert Reilly for On the Line. Anncr: You've been listening to "On the Line" - a discussion of United States policies and contemporary issues. This is --------. 22-Dec-1999 12:09 PM EDT (22-Dec-1999 1709 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .
