Two mayors, two worlds

Last week, two political plots were clearly overlooked with each other, developing at different speeds in different corners of the country. In Novosibirsk, they continued to squeeze out the list of "democratic coalition" from the election; As many people think, the mayor-communist Anatoly Lokot had a hand. And in Moscow, the court extended for another two months the arrest of the mayor of Yaroslavl Evgeny Urlashov.

Anatoly Lokot defeated the elections of the mayor of Novosibirsk a year and a half ago, and this victory was presented with many then not just as a winning candidate from the Communist Party - no, as the success of a united opposition. You can read that Ilya Ponomarev or Vladimir Milov wrote about this. With Yevgeny Urlashov, I myself spoke on the phone a few days after his election by the mayor of Yaroslavl in the spring of 2012. Here is what he said then to the Vologda newspaper Premier: “The elections attracted great attention of the media-both Russian and international. And, I think, this is a very useful experience when many different parties supported one opposition candidate-opposition to corrupt authority. We have a large country, from Kaliningrad to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and from the new land to Kazakhstan, so that new bright candidates will certainly be new candidates It is possible to appear.

The fate of Yaroslavl as a "democratic site" is well known - in July 2013, Urlashov was arrested on corruption charges. The “Victory of the United Opposition” in Novosibirsk is also very indicative: the mayor of Lokot said that the “democratic coalition” was finances of the US Congress that Navalny and Kasyanov received $ 20 million and prepare the Orange Revolution in the city. Leonid Volkov, the head of the campaign headquarters of the coalition, is sure : the opposition in the current election is conducted by filing the elbow: “ The city hall is needed because we are annealing a protest electorate. In Novosibirsk, a high protest voting, and the Communist Party has a very strong regional vote, since there is no“ red belt ”, we expected it, we calculated The fact that if we conduct a bright campaign, then those who vote against United Russia will vote for us. so as not to let us go. "

After the elections, each opposition mayor goes to the fork

After the election, each opposition mayor goes to the fork. The road that he chooses leads it either to Lokty or to Urlashov. Or he desperately “fits” into the vertical and does not disdain on this path - so, in 2010, Viktor Kondrashov won the mayors of Irkutsk with the support of the Communist Party, and six months later joined United Russia. Or he, like Evgeny Urlashov, is behind bars.

The above should not be understood so that there are no other options at all. Right now in Russia there are two famous mayors who manage to maintain relative independence: Evgeny Roizman in Yekaterinburg and Galina Shirshina in Petrozavodsk. But these cases are also indicative-Roizman holds an almost decorative position, while most of the power levers holds the city manager in his hands. Shirshina can lose his chair in the fall - according to the law of the mayor of Petrozavodsk, a resignation awaits with two unsatisfactory assessments from the deputies, and Shirshina already has one “non -department”. In addition, she recently imposed a veto on a solution that canceled direct elections of the mayor, but the other day the City Council was able to overcome this veto.

Actually, it is in Petrozavodsk that the roads of Urlashov and the elbow converge again: this summer the direct elections of the mayor were renovated in Yaroslavl. In the spring, elections of the heads of municipalities were abolished in the Novosibirsk region, although they retained them in the regional center itself. But, judging by how the month after the month the elections are “cleaned” in large cities of the country (Irkutsk, Omsk, Vladivostok), the final stop is understandable-it will be planted on it and land, despite all the fashionable conversations about the “Orange Revolution” and the CIA hand.

Whether Evgeny Urlashov will be released by that time is unknown.

Ivan Belyaev - Journalist Radio Liberty

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  Ivan Belyaev

  Social Networks Editor Radio Liberty