| Communists broke into the Moscow City Duma for the first time The main surprise of the recent elections to the Moscow City Duma was the success of the Communists, who not only entered the capital’s parliament for the first time, but also showed second results after the party in power. According to preliminary voting results announced yesterday by the head of the Moscow City Election Commission, Valentin Gorbunov, United Russia won 47.27% of the votes, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation - 16.74%, Yabloko - 11.09%. The remaining parties were unable to overcome the ten percent barrier.
It is noteworthy that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Moscow received approximately as many votes as sociologists and political scientists predicted for Rodina before the elections. According to opinion polls conducted in the fall, the Communist Party in the capital was teetering on the edge of 10%, and in 2001, in the elections to the city parliament, it gained only 8% of the votes. However, observers are not inclined to explain the success of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation by the fact that the supporters of Gennady Zyuganov on Sunday were supported by part of the electorate of Rodina, which was withdrawn from the elections. According to the famous sociologist Yuri Levada, today we are not talking about strengthening the communists, but about weakening the positions of the democrats in the Russian capital. “Previously, there was a majority of democrats in the Moscow City Duma,” Mr. Levada recalled in a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent. - Now there are almost none of them there, but this is due not so much to the voting of Muscovites as to the transfer of many deputies to the party in power. For example, Vladimir Platonov, Mikhail Moskvin-Tarkhanov and others switched to United Russia.”
The party in power, whose list in Moscow was headed by the popular mayor, managed to approach the 50 percent threshold, which in a number of other regions United Russia members can only dream of. In addition, in all 15 single-mandate constituencies of the capital, candidates from United Russia also became winners. The official results of the elections will be summed up on December 8, but yesterday representatives of the Moscow City Election Commission outlined how deputy mandates in the capital’s parliament will be distributed between parties: “United Russia” in the Moscow City Duma will be represented by 28 deputies, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation - four, “Yabloko” - three deputies.
Among the single-mandate winners were Moscow City Duma deputies already familiar to Muscovites: Inna Svyatenko, Igor Antonov, Viktor Ivanov, Valery Shaposhnikov, Tatyana Portnova, Andrei Metelsky, Vera Stepanenko, Mikhail Antontsev, Sergei Turta, Stepan Orlov, Oleg Bocharov, Alexander Semennikov, Vladimir Platonov, Evgeniy Gerasimov, Valery Skobinov.
As for the candidates from the party list, United Russia is in no hurry to name the names of future deputies. Speaker of the Moscow City Duma Vladimir Platonov explained to a Vremya Novostey correspondent that Yuri Luzhkov, who heads the list, refused to work in the city parliament and will retain the post of mayor. According to Mr. Platonov, it is necessary to wait until the final voting results are summed up - candidates from those districts in which United Russia received the maximum number of votes will enter the Moscow City Duma. At the same time, Vladimir Platonov himself noted that he agrees to retain the post of speaker of the Moscow City Duma if he receives a corresponding proposal from the party organization. “I have no reason to withdraw my candidacy,” he said.
It is still not clear who will represent the Communist Party in the future Moscow City Duma. The leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation party list, Ivan Melnikov, does not yet know which Duma he will have to work in in the new year - city or state. On the eve of the elections, he said that if about 20% of Muscovites vote for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, then he will try to justify their trust and will work in the city. If only two or three communist candidates get into the Duma, then there will be no point in his presence. Since the result obtained by the Communists does not fit into any of these scenarios, yesterday Mr. Melnikov evasively stated that he personally is ready to surrender his mandate as a State Duma deputy, but the question of his further employment will be decided by the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Only the second and third numbers on the party list of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation do not raise questions - actor Nikolai Gubenko and Colonel Vladimir Ulas. The Communists also intend to name the rest of their deputies after the final summing up of the voting results. In general, the leaders of the Communist Party assess the election results cautiously. “I don’t think we should call this a victory too loudly. But we shouldn’t close our eyes to reality: in the current elections, every fifth Muscovite voted for the Communists,” said Gennady Zyuganov after the preliminary voting results were announced.
In contrast to the restrained communists, representatives of Yabloko, on the contrary, consider the 11% of votes received in the elections to be a complete victory. Commenting on the results of the campaign, Moscow City Duma deputy Evgeny Bunimovich noted that “in conditions when all administrative resources were thrown against Yabloko, black PR was used, and even a “killer” party was registered calling not to vote for Yabloko, the Democrats succeeded for the first time win the elections without agreeing on anything with the Kremlin.” “This suggests that perhaps all is not lost yet,” the deputy told a Vremya Novostey correspondent, adding that the short experience of cooperation between Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces showed that the parties can work together.
In addition to Evgeniy Bunimovich, SPS member Ivan Novitsky will also represent the democrats in the new Duma. The third deputy should be either the head of the city branch of Yabloko, Sergei Mitrokhin, or Alexei Arbatov, for whom almost an equal number of voters voted in the districts.
Answering the question about why Yabloko fielded so few candidates in single-member districts, Mr. Bunimovich explained that a huge electoral deposit must be paid for a candidate from a party not represented in the State Duma. In addition, an election campaign in a district of 500,000 also costs a lot of money, which the Democrats simply did not have this time. “The election campaign showed which parties are actually sponsored by the oligarchs. “Yabloko is not one of them,” said the deputy. Alexander GUDKOV |
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