Press Release, 21.04.2014

A scientific conference called “Political parties and its institutional environment: innovation, tradition, tendency” took place at Russian State University for the Humanities on April 18.

More than forty political scientists, professors and students participated in the event.

Secretary of YABLOKO Political Committee, PhD in Political Science and Professor Galina Mikhaleva became the principle speaker.

In her report on “The logic of twenty years “legislative tossing” of authorities: party and electoral systems” Galina Mikhaleva spoke about the construction of the party and electoral systems in Russia since the beginning of 90-s until today. She mentioned that the authorities toss trying to find the most profitable system for themselves. “They tried all the ways from the plurality voting system to proportional, from the proportional system to the mixed one, from the mixed system back to proportional and now we return to the plurality voting system. Such unsystematic approach shows that the authorities don’t have a long-term concept of the electoral system development and they aim to get only an immediate profit for themselves,” explained Galina Mikhaleva.

“The authorities invent different imitating institutions as a substitution for the real feedback channels between the authorities and society but these institutions don’t work and can’t work,” she emphasized.

Professor Mikhaleva said that for the first time the administrative resource was used at the federal level in support of Boris Yeltsin in 1996 at the presidential elections .

Mikhaleva said that in 2003 the political parties became full subjects of the electoral process but at the same time lost their political subjectivity and became dependent on the authoritative group.

The year 2006 was a red line for the party system institution. The legislation on political parties was hardened so that the possibility of independent political parties existence in Russia became nearly impossible.

As for the transformation of the legislation on political parties, Galina Mikhaleva said that the latest radical liberalization of the legislation on political parties in 2012 was followed by a reaction aiming to prevent independent politicians from getting into regional parliaments: additional election filters were established. It can be illustrated by another political technology of the authorities – primaries to the  Moscow City Duma 2014 elections. Its real aim is to drop the attention to the elections, provide low turnout,  hide the party of power members under the mask of  “public candidates”.

Summing up, Galina Mikhaleva noted that if such policy continued, the hardening of opposition candidates suppression could be expected and the political possess would have to be realised in an informal sphere.