Kremlin-backed candidate Valentina Matviyenko will face off against St. Petersburg Vice Governor Anna Markova in a second vote on Oct. 5, the St. Petersburg election committee said Monday. Matviyenko led Sunday's vote with 48.91 percent, while Markova came in second with 15.89 percent.

Third place went to "none of the above," with 10.97 percent.

Turnout was a low 28.99 percent, about two-thirds of the turnout in the last gubernatorial election in 2000, the election committee said.

Matviyenko had widely been expected to win the vote after receiving a public endorsement from President Vladimir Putin. On Monday, she blamed rival candidates for her showing.

"All of the candidates worked against me," Matviyenko said at a news conference. "They didn't talk about their programs but just worked against me.

"If we had used administrative resources, it would not have been hard to make up the missing 1.4 percent to win. [But] we didn't do that."

Matviyenko said that during the campaign up to 2 million copies of "false and compromising material" regarding herself or her relatives "had been seized daily in the city."

She added that she had spoken with Putin by telephone Monday morning and he had called the election results "good." She did not elaborate.

Markova said Monday that she would form a coalition with several other candidates -- including Mikhail Amosov, head of the Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and Legislative Assembly Deputy Konstantin Sukhenko -- to try to defeat Matviyenko.

Amosov, a fierce critic of City Hall, took 7.06 percent of the vote, while Sukhenko took 5.13 percent. Fourth place went to Sergei Belyayev, the former head of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, with 8.1 percent. The other four candidates got less then 1 percent each.

Markova said she was unsure how she would finance her runoff campaign because she did not have any money left.

But she [said] that she was pleased with the Sunday's result. "After the draft results were announced and it became clear we were going to face a second round, I shook hands with Sukhenko. Then I warily shook hands with Amosov. And we couldn't stop shaking hands," Markova said at an impromptu news conference outside the St. Petersburg election committee's office.

Matviyenko stressed that she would not pursue a coalition with other candidates. "I am a tolerant person by nature, but don't take any ultimatums. I won't negotiate any conditions, but I am ready for negotiations if no conditions are imposed," she said.

According to local election law, if the vote against all the candidates is higher then the vote for either of the two candidates in the second round, the election is considered invalid. If that happens, the next election should take place within a year, while an acting governor, appointed by the previous governor, runs City Hall. Governor Vladimir Yakovlev appointed his deputy Alexander Beglov to lead the city after he was appointed a deputy prime minister in June and moved to Moscow.

Election officials said no serous violations were registered Sunday and during the campaign.

Police on Sunday briefly detained six sociologists who were conducting exit polls on suspicion of breaking election law. Election committee spokesman Nikolai Konkin said, however, that the detention of the sociologists was a mistake. "It is quite typical that our law enforcers don't know the law," he said.

Police said the pollsters with the Agency for Social Research had been working less then 50 meters from a polling station, which is prohibited by election law, Interfax reported.

The Agency for Social Research said it knew the rules and had not broken them. Also, the agency's head, Roman Mogilevsky, said police told him that they had not received any instructions allowing pollsters to conduct exit polls.

"We can conduct surveys without having a license, and we don't have to inform the authorities about it," he told reporters. "We informed the city election commission just in case."

Police also detained two people suspected of trying to bribe voters, Interfax said.

City Prosecutor Nikolai Vinnichenko said police had prevented ballots from being stolen by intoxicated voters in two districts. The prosecutor's office has opened five criminal cases for lying to and attempting to bribe voters during the election campaign.

Markova said candidates have filed more than 5,000 complaints to the election committee.

Tatyana Dorutina, of the St. Petersburg League of Voters, said that if anything, the election had showed that the authorities could break the law whenever they want. She cited Putin's controversial public endorsement of Matviyenko less than three weeks before the vote. By law, top officials cannot use their positions to try to influence an election.

"This was allowed to be done by the president. Putin signed the law himself and broke it himself," Dorutina said in a telephone interview.

"There were more than enough legal violations during this campaign.

We have filed two complaints to the city election committee against two candidates, Belyayev and Matviyenko. Belyayev was using a sexist advertisement, and [Vadim] Tyulpanov [the speaker of the Legislative Assembly] called for the public to support Matviyenko," she said.

"We haven't received any answer, and this understandable. If Putin can break the law, what would anybody say about a Tyulpanov?"

The incumbent governors in three regions were re-elected in weekend polls.

Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel won a runoff against regional lawmaker Anton Bykov with 55.67 percent of the vote. Bykov got about 30 percent.

Elsewhere, Tomsk Governor Viktor Kress garnered 71.21 percent of the vote, while Leningrad Governor Valery Serdyukov took just over 56 percent.

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Gubernatorial Elections in St. Petersburg 2003

The Moscow Times, September 23, 2003