According to insiders, the jockeying to get new and retain old positions within St. Petersburg's City Hall has already begun. Given that there doesn't seem to be much left to do with regard to actually winning the campaign, Matviyenko's staff can now concentrate on deciding what St. Petersburg's next government is going to look like.

I would label the whole process rather cynical, if I wasn't so convinced that disgusting is a better word.

Even acting Governor Alexander Beglov has joined the cynical (disgusting?) group of "joiners." Deputy governor in charge of the administrative committee under former Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, Beglov is said to be trying to wrangle himself the construction committee job under Smolny's next boss. And he appears to be in a hurry.

Last week, the acting governor told us that the city had only set aside enough funds to pay for one round of gubernatorial elections. (In the event that no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote in the first round, the city charter calls for a runoff between the two frontrunners.) If a second round is required, Beglov says, it will end up hurting the city's budget. His proposed solution to this danger is for voters to cast their ballots for the candidate that they think has the best chance of clearing 50 percent. He might as well have suggested that the City Election Commission hand out ballots with one name on them. I'm sure that there are still people kicking around with enough experience in drawing up this type of ballot to offer advice.

About the only political figures who don't appear to be falling over each other in the "joiners" rush are the other 10 candidates in the race. With regard to this group, Matviyenko and her campaign team appear to have opted for a couple of new variations on the hackneyed phrase.

The first is: "If they won't join you, make it look as if they already have."

This variation arrived in the form of a leaflet distributed on the streets by Matviyenko workers with quotations from three of her opponents in the race, appparently extolling her qualifications as a candidate for governor.

Mikhail Amosov, the head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly, is quoted as describing Matviyenko to Kommersant as "diplomatic and able to bring together different political forces." St. Petersburg Deputy Governor Anna Markova, in an article that originally appeared in Gazeta, said, "I have only heard positive things about [Matviyenko's] work and that, wherever she has worked, she has brought real advantages." Konstantin Sukhenko told the newspaper Sankt Petersburgskiye Vedomosti that while he doesn't know Matviyenko personally, he considers her to be a "competent person with a lot of experience who knows the city and the whole country."

These are all pretty positive sounding endorsements. The only problem is that when they were made -- in the middle of March, just after Matviyenko had been named as presidential envoy to the Northwest Federal District -- she wasn't a campaign opponent at all. It's a bit like asking Boris Berezovky what he thinks of President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Day, 2000, and then using the quote as evidence of how he feels today.

Although this can't be called false campaigning from a legal standpoint, it's not the sort of literature you would expect from a candidate who, just two weeks ago, called on all candidates in the race to join in signing a manifesto she had authored calling for "clean and democratic elections."

The issue of clean and democratic elections gave us an opportunity to see another variation on the "joiners" theme: "If they won't join you at your place, you sure as hell shouldn't show up at theirs."

Last Monday, a public meeting was held in which all gubernatorial candidates were invited to discuss the principles of running a campaign without mudslinging or dirty tricks. Matviyenko was a no-show. To be fair, only four candidates bothered to attend, but I would have thought Matviyenko would have been willing to join the discussion of something that she herself chose to make a campaign issue almost from the outset.

I know that politics is never a pretty game, but the general dishonesty that seems to be involved in what is beginning to look more like a coronation than an election is frustrating. While according to a survey conducted by the Agency of Social Information on Aug. 10, 68 percent of St. Petersburg residents believe Matviyenko will be the next governor, I can't believe there aren't a lot of people out there who feel as frustrated as I do.

However, a conversation with one of those 68 percent the other day made me wonder why I bother complaining.

"It doesn't matter whom I vote for. Everything has already been decided for us, so it doesn't make sense to vote at all," he said.

My protest that, as voters, it depends on us who wins, and that we should get out and cast ballots, was met with the response: "No, Matviyenko will win, and you know it as well as I do."

Perhaps this really is the way that most people think. But that doesn't necessarily make it right.

Vladimir Kovalyev is a Staff Writer with The St. Petersburg Times.

See also:

Gubernatorial Elections in St. Petersburg 2003

The Moscow Times, August 25, 2003