"The Right People"

The monopoly of the party in power is not allowed to be broken even at the district level

Deputies of the capital's municipal assemblies, constantly complaining about the excessive centralization of power in Moscow, accused the mayor's office of trying to consolidate the monopoly of United Russia in decision-making even at the district level. A week before the municipal elections in the capital, it became finally clear that, in fact, there would be no fight. As Vremya Novostei learned, the current deputies of municipal assemblies, who were planning to run again for A Just Russia, intend today to make a statement that in Moscow the procedure for electing representative bodies of district power has been turned into an empty formality.

“There are no elections as such,” Rustam Makhmudov, a deputy of the Krylatskoye municipal assembly, told Vremya Novostey, “candidates from the United Russia party or its members who pretend to be independent, as self-nominated candidates, are going to the polls.” All serious competitors, according to him, on the eve of the vote are hastily “removed en masse under completely flimsy pretexts.” “The legitimacy of the party conference, which determined the nominees from A Just Russia, was called into question,” explained the district deputy.

According to Mr. Makhmudov, he himself, having gone through the self-nomination procedure during the formation of the first convocation of the municipal assembly in 2004 (involves the collection of about 40-50 signatures or a deposit of 60 thousand rubles), this time he chose to run on the lists parliamentary party. True, it turned out that “without any difficulties only United Russia members are registered” at the municipal level, both directly from the party and as self-nominated candidates. “I don’t understand how the newcomers from United Russia manage to get by without any comments,” Mr. Makhmudov is perplexed.

However, according to local self-government expert, member of the Public Chamber Vyacheslav Glazychev, the “scandalousness” of the elections of district deputies is given by the very “depravity of the system” of municipal authorities as a whole. According to him, the law of November 6, 2002 “On the organization of local self-government in the city of Moscow,” as a result of a number of amendments, left deputies of municipal assemblies without any significant powers, making them nothing more than “a fig leaf, a decorum of democracy.” In addition, the prefectures, Mr. Glazychev claims, are trying in every possible way to ensure that in municipal assemblies there are “the right people, that is, dependent people, not those who live there, but those who work there in budgetary organizations.” “True, there are still activists who believe that the local government system will work, but I sincerely sympathize with them, since they cannot do anything serious,” Mr. Glazychev told Vremya Novostei. Adding that, in his opinion, elections to municipal assemblies are nothing more than a waste of, albeit small, budget money.

Let us recall that, for example, the new version of the city law on the organization of local self-government, which came into force in July 2006, left municipal deputies, instead of the right to make decisions on issues of territory development at a meeting, with a “unpromising” opportunity to make proposals on certain urban planning projects. “There are no guarantees that these proposals will be heeded,” said the leader of the Yabloko-United Democrats faction in the Moscow City Duma, Sergei Mitrokhin, who last year tried to return to his district colleagues the right to participate in regulating the development of urban areas. However, despite numerous disputes between the Moscow authorities and the townspeople, United Russia (who make up the Duma majority) considered the participation of municipal deputies as intermediaries from the townspeople as an “unacceptable barrier”.

In turn, Rustam Makhmudov, recognizing that “the main influence and colossal funds”, along with powers, are really concentrated in the councils and prefectures of the administrative districts of Moscow, considers the opinion that his work is useless to be an incorrect stereotype. “From a political point of view, we are really a candy wrapper for democracy, but we still manage to influence what is happening in our territories. Unlike a complaint from an ordinary citizen, a letter on a deputy’s letterhead is not so easy to brush aside; it is easier for us to bombard the authorities and seek participation even in issues that are not legally within our competence,” the deputy is confident.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO