Nenate right

The project “Just business” is reanimated: on February 29, the party was headed by the business ombudsman Boris Titov. Why does the Kremlin be loyal liberals and whether the project has a chance to take place in the election to the State Duma

Boris Titov votes for his own candidacy at the Congress of the Party of the right -hand business, Moscow, February 29, 2016. Photo: Peter Kassin (Kommersant)

The “right business” was created in November 2008 by the merger of three parties - the opposition Union of Right Forces and the Prochrevsky “civilian power” and the Democratic Party of Russia. The political officers from the ATP Leonid Gozman, Boris Nadezhdin and many others, the Moscow branch was led by businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin. At the same time, the party did not have one charismatic leader, and the next few years there was a tense casting for this role. According to rumors, the post of chairman was proposed at that time to the Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, but he refused, deciding not to go into a pure policy and continue to work in the government. As a result, in the summer of 2011, the party was headed by businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, and all analysts began to talk about the high chances of passing the “right -handed” to parliament, although Prokhorov had not previously engaged in politics, and the party did not conduct special work with voters for several years. The finale was unexpected, bright and fast.

The expulsion of the oligarch

In September 2011, the day before the congress, the author of the article took place the next conversation with a friend who worked in the Central Executive Committee of the party.

- Tell me, are you going to put forward in the federal part of the list the singer Alla Pugacheva?

- We are not up to this now - perhaps tomorrow Mikhail Prokhorov will cease to be the head of the party.

Mikhail Prokhorov (left) could not imagine that Titov would once take his place, Moscow, June 26, 2011. Photo: Maxim Shemetov (ITAR-TASS)

Closer to the night, it became known that the prospect of the resignation of Prokhorov is completely real. The background was as follows: Prokhorov refused to coordinate part of the list of candidates from his party to the State Duma with the presidential administration, which, in particular, insisted on deleting Evgeny Roizman (now he holds the post of mayor of Yekaterinburg). At the same time, Prokhorov did not take into account that if public opinion is, of course, on his side, then the party’s executive committee is controlled by immigrants from the Democratic Party of Russia, which was headed by the famous political strategist Andrei Bogdanov. The next day, Bogdanov’s people technically held the first part of the congress in closed mode, Prokhorov stopped being the head of the party, and the head of the PD executive committee Andrei Dunaev became the acting. Prokhorov and his supporters left the party, later creating a “civilian platform”, which a businessman again lost by about the same scenario as a few years as his first party.

Repetition of the passed

The election of the chairman of Boris Titov and the coming to the party of charismatic regional politicians - for example, State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitrieva, so far look like an exemplary repetition of the plot of five years ago. Political scientists give optimistic forecasts, but it is not clear whether Titov can obtain real control over the party, that is, over the executive committee and regional branches.

The ex-employee of the Presidential Administration, the head of the Center for Political Conjuncture, Alexei Chesnakov, also recalls the history of 2011 and is extremely skeptical. In his opinion, Titov thus realizes personal ambitions, and if United Russia will work normally with voters, the project does not have a chance to get into the State Duma. If you have to falsify the results of voting, then they can be falsified in favor of the “right-handed”, but the Kremlin must decide that for some reason he needs the party in parliament.

“There are no new ideas, and the system reproduces the old ones,” Chesnakov summarizes.

The head of the political expert group Konstantin Kalachev discussed a new project with Titov personally. “Having talked, I can assure him to the sincerity of his intentions. He is really convinced that his party will overcome the five percent barrier to the State Duma. He also believes that he is a carrier of secret knowledge both in matters of economics and in the field of political technology. The spoiler, obviously, does not think. Although in other structures of other people only in this role is considered. But he, apparently, believes that he will be able to get between the streams and gain a foothold not only in the State Duma, but also in public opinion as the carrier of original and saving economic ideas for Russia, ”said Kalachev. Nobody could give any intelligible public explanation why Titov is included in the Duma race just six months before the elections, including Titov himself. At the same time, do not forget that it is the removal of Prokhorov from the project of the “right -hand” in the Kremlin that it is still considered a mistake that entailed protests against falsification of the elections: there is a point of view that if liberal voters received 20 deputies in parliament, they would not have entered the street. Perhaps the resuscitation of the “right business” is an attempt not to repeat the miscalculations of 2011. Or the Kremlin, on the contrary, seeks to finally crush the liberal electorate, forcing Parnassus, Yabloko and the “right -handed” to compete for the voices of a rather narrow layer of voters.

Laid start

On the media side, the project has so far been starting very unsuccessfully: the press service of the “right-hand business” refused to accredit to the congress of journalists, saying that it would be held closed. The press service of Titov managed to hold several familiar correspondents to the congress, but in general, all this made an extremely negative impression. Moreover, the party of Titov will now have to participate in the elections in the new configuration. Unlike 2011, there is already a competitive on the liberal flank: Parnas and Yabloko will fight for the voices of the protest electorate. And unlike Prokhorov, the 2011 model Titov, Titov should be prepared to respond to accusations of spoiler. The first vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies, Alexei Makarkin, believes that in general, the chances of Yabloko are higher than that of Parnas, but also the “right-handed business” may find the reverence from among the system liberals. “The chances of Yabloko are higher than that of Parnassus, since Yavlinsky still causes the 1990s in memory when he was a figure of Zyuganov-Zhirinovsky’s scale. Kasyanov pulls Parnassus down, and Navalny will not be allowed either as a candidate (due to criminal record), or as a participant in the debate (since only candidates are allowed to them).

Now about Titov. He proceeds from the fact that there is a modernist voter (either voting for Prokhorov, or sympathizing with him), who is now out of work. For such a voter, Yabloko and Parnassus can be too radical. Most likely, these voters may not go to the polls at all. The Titov party may interest them, but if there are a lot of factors, an interesting list for them, a successful campaign, a clear understanding of requests of the target audience, ”says Makarkin.

Oksana Dmitrieva is the most vivid acquisition of a reanimated party, Moscow, February 29, 2016. Photo: Peter Kassin (Kommersant)

Makarkin agreed that Oksana Dmitrieva became an unequivocally successful acquisition for the “right -hand business”. The charismatic Petersburg, a deputy of the State Duma of all convocations, she elected to the State Duma in 2011 according to the lists of “Fair Russia”, but eventually dispersed with the leadership of the party in opinion when the views of Sergei Mironov and his actions became indistinguishable from the views of representatives of “United Russia”. As a result, Dmitrieva performed at the congress with criticism of the “slurred political position of the party” and, as a result, was not elected to the Presidium of the Central Political Council. In the spring of 2015, she and her supporters left “Fair Russia”. “Dmitrieva, of course, is left -handed by views on the economy. But it is interesting that completely right-wing voters who are more important for her are not her position on the pension issue, but the “differentness” of the image in comparison with the parliamentary majority (nevertheless it was once a politician from Yabloko, the minister with Kiriyenko). In general, now the ideological field has been blurred and priority for the perception of images, ”says Makarkin.

The Kremlin reacts to demand

So, the party of Titov, on the one hand, gathers under its wing of moderate oppositionists, on the other hand, will try to attract the voices of dissatisfied liberal voters, who, however, believe that the Crimea was legally annexed to Russia.

Experts note that the task of going to the parliament for such a project will be difficult, and most importantly, in the end it can become a spoiler not for Yabloko and Parnassus, but for United Russia, taking systemic liberals from it. “There is a niche“ Liberals “Krymnash”. Hypothetically, it can be up to 7%. But so far the project does not fill it out, ”says Yevgeny Mintchenko, head of the International Institute of Political Expertise. Political scientist Mikhail Zakharov agrees with him: Titov should not forget that he is not yet a big politician and we need to soberly evaluate his starting positions. “Strictly speaking, the“ right business ”does not yet compete with Yabloko and Parnassus - they huddle the parallel electorate. Titov, as it were, occupies a niche of “relative loyalists” - ideally, there should be those who, in principle, “for Crimea”, are not quite against the acting government, but who does not like bureaucracy, is the middle class of non -metic large cities. “Yabloko” and Parnassus for conditionally regional businessmen 30+ are not very claiming (that is, they periodically say that it seems to be their audience, but the result, for example, Parnassus in Kostroma is more likely to speak the opposite). But whether it will be possible to align these rather depolitized people in the polls is a big question, ”Zakharov believes.

Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov notes that, despite all the risks, the new “right-handed” incarnation has one important advantage compared to all other competitors- at least opposition, even pro-government ones. “Demand for new persons by voters is intensifying. I think that the “party of Titov” is the Kremlin’s attempt to satisfy this demand. If the “new right” manages to form the right message and gain access to federal channels, then they have a good chance. Theoretically, they will even be able to gain 5% and overcome the passing barrier. Another thing is that the party of Titov will be delayed, most likely, not at Yabloko or Parnassus, but by EP.

However, this will not become a big problem for the Kremlin. There is no reason to doubt Titov’s loyalty. The country has a huge unsatisfied demand for new persons by personality-oriented voters. The ideology and political views of candidates are not very important to them, they vote, so to speak, for the “characters”. If Titov will show on TV every day and each show will be accompanied by the phrase that it is he and his associates that will be able to save the economy, then a significant mass of these voters will decide to give him a chance, ”says Gallyamov.

Finally, in a situation of economic crisis, the Titov party can get another strong bonus at the start: it will be in the center of the agenda, as it will talk with the voter about the economy. “Of course, this in itself does not guarantee that voters will rush to vote for him, but this at least increases the chance that they will listen to what Titov says,” Gallyamov notes.