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In the Communist Party's television ad, a construction worker's
hard hat is slammed down on a table. Then a mobile phone. The
muscular arm of a laborer takes up an arm-wrestling pose. A businessman's
arm, with cuff links and a fancy watch, accepts the challenge.
As the years of the 1990s tick by on the screen, the businessman
almost wins. But in the closing scene, the worker triumphs.
In the final week of Russia's parliamentary-election campaign,
these are the kinds of images flooding the airwaves. Virtually
every major party is focusing on the economy and Russia's tumultuous
attempt in recent years to become a free-market democracy.
In the four years since the last parliamentary election, Russia
has gone from boom to bust and halfway back again. The re-election
of President Boris Yeltsin in 1996 touched off a burst of foreign
investment in Russian stocks and bonds, and the country returned
to global credit markets. But the Asian financial crisis, political-clan
warfare in Russia and the overvalued ruble led to a devaluation
and default in August 1998 that discredited many free-market reforms.
If the advertising of the parties is a mirror of the political
consensus today, the verdict on Russian capitalism is not a happy
one. From the Communists to a bloc headed by former Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov to the centrist Yabloko party, political commercials
are filled with criticism of corruption, cronyism, lawlessness
and poverty. Rarely does anyone raise such issues as Russia's
place in the world or who should lead it after Yeltsin leaves
office next year; elementary questions of jobs and welfare are
at the core of every campaign commercial.
'Are we going to live better?'
"Are we going to live better?" an elderly man asks
Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the Yabloko party, in one ad. "We
have everything to live better in this country," Yavlinsky
tells him. The party's slogan then appears: "Yabloko - for
a decent life."
In another ad, Primakov sits solemnly at a big wooden desk. "Look
around!" he says. "Poverty, lawlessness, corruption
and theft! These things prevent us from working normally and being
proud of our country. . . . We will establish order on the basis
of law. We will strike at those who take bribes!"
Despite the gloomy tone, there are promising trends in the rhetoric
and platforms of the Russian political parties. One is the simple
fact of a vigorous political campaign in which all players see
the race as a vehicle for competing for power.
Reconfiguring the Duma
Sunday's vote will determine the makeup of the lower house of
Parliament, the 450-seat State Duma, for four years. Half the
seats are filled based on party lists, meaning parties that win
at least 5 percent of the vote will share these 225 seats on a
proportional basis.
The other half are filled through races in individual districts.
This is the first time in the short, eight-year history of Russian
democracy that Duma districts have remained the same since the
previous election, and more than a dozen candidates are running
in many of them. The upper chamber of parliament, the Federation
Council, is made up of regional governors and leaders of local
legislatures.
Most of the major parties have drafted relatively pro-market
political platforms. Although the Duma's powers are relatively
weak, the last session demonstrated that the chamber can be an
important factor in economic policy, blocking reforms, as well
as pushing them.
A study by Mikhail Dmitriev of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace indicated that in the past four years, all the political
parties "have grown weary of inflation, and no party is proposing
large-scale printing of money" as a means of coping with
government obligations. Four years ago, the Communists and the
party of nationalist legislator Vladimir Zhirinovsky advocated
"virtually uncontrolled" money printing.
Privatization of assets
Moreover, Dmitriev said, the major parties now agree on the need
to cut punitive taxes, and none of the parties - including the
Communists - "advocates full-scale state intervention"
in the economy, a marked change from four years ago. Perhaps the
most important shift, Dmitriev found, is on the issue of privatization
of state assets. Russia carried out a historic transfer of state-owned
property to private hands in the 1990s, one that remains intensely
controversial. Dmitriev noted that the Communists sought four
years ago to put some enterprises back in the hands of the state.
Now the focus is on improving how companies are run, not renationalizing
them, he said. "The Communist Party is now talking about
how to enforce property rights and provide effective protection
of private property which was acquired `honestly.' "
The Communists, however, do want to take back those enterprises
they say are "working unsatisfactorily, or not working at
all," party leader Gennady Zyuganov said.
Targeting 'oligarchs'
Zyuganov also has vowed to reverse some gains of Russia's new
financial tycoons, known as the "oligarchs." He said
Russia's privatization led to "bandit capitalism" and
that "now with shooting, scuffling and under the complete
indifference of the law-enforcement authorities, the bandits have
started the second redistribution of what was already stolen once."
The Communists are not alone in attacking the tycoons. "Will
we live in a state of oligarchs and corrupt officials, or in a
normal and prosperous country?" Yabloko member Vladimir Averchev
asked in one of the party's television broadcasts.
In another broadcast, Primakov promised that, if elected, "we
will start fighting those plundering Russia."
See also:
Duma elections,
1999
See the orginal at
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/nation-world/html98/comm_19991215.html
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