Politics in Russia: power, lobby, conflicts. Issue No (42) 783

October 12 - 18, 2009

Main tendencies of political week

Last week the public policy became noticeably more active, which was attributed to several reasons. Firstly, the recent regional elections confirmed tendencies observed on the Russian political field. The party of power preserved the top ranking (to a great extent due to its administrative resources). Given conflicts in the liberal community, rightists substantially lost and did not collect the vote they could have secured if they had consolidated their electorate. Although communists retained their previously won positions, their ground is subjected to constant erosion. LDPR seems to have finally depleted the leadership resource of its head Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Realizing the fact that they may fail to get into the State Duma in 2011, the parliamentary minorities organized a demarche aimed at demonstrating their ambitions and possibilities to state authorities; but on the whole this move was rather crumpled.

Judging by recent events, the USA is not going to openly impose their ideal model of democracy, as Americans think, on Russia any longer. At the same time, Washington will try to simultaneously assure the liberal public that nothing has changed since the time of total domination of Pax Americana.

Attempts to find or provoke splits in the ruling tandem did not stop. In particular, there was a leak of information about reshuffle in the presidential administration. According to the gossip, Sergey Naryshkin is allegedly to be replaced by justice minister Alexander Konovalov. Some statements by Dmitry Medvedev were also interpreted in this manner (e.g. his latest TV interview) with conclusions saying the president latently opposed the PM. Meanwhile, a group of the disappointed became more vividly seen in the liberal community; their hopes for liberalization are now connected with some “emergencies” (e.g. a color revolution like in Moldova), not with the president.

The situation on the government level also became noticeably tense. Statistics service head Vladimir Sokolin declared about his soon resignation and simultaneously accused the economy ministry of the lack of professionalism and overstatement of parameters. Some personal resentment is likely to be behind these statements but this informational attack on the economy ministry is beneficial for finance minister Alexey Kudrin first of all. In this case it concerns an old permanent conflict between the two ministries as well as the sharpened confrontation regarding the way of using budget funds and reserves in the light of statements about the soon end of the crisis.

Major events October 12 - 18, 2009

Volume: 15 pages