Russia's bid for 'competitive' elections

"It would sound funny to say the Kremlin doesn't play any role in Russian political life," he says, deflecting the question. But he also argues that it was necessary to create Fair Russia to present voters with a left-wing but pro-Kremlin alternative to United Russia. "If Fair Russia shows that it can run an effective campaign against such a powerful force as United Russia, we hope this will be the first sign that genuine political competition is taking root in Russia."

In the last elections to the 450-seat State Duma – the lower house of parliament – held in 2003, United Russia and its allies took a "constitutional majority" of two-thirds of the seats in parliament's lower house. The two small liberal parties, which had formerly had Duma representation, failed to hurdle the 5 percent barrier. Even the Communists, accustomed to winning a quarter of the votes, were reduced to a small rump of deputies.

United Russia has employed its legislative muscle to push through a series of Kremlin-authored amendments to Russia's electoral laws aimed at narrowing the field to big, Moscow-centered parties.

The changes have ended the single constituency races that often produced independent, locally based politicians. Now all Duma deputies are chosen by their party leaderships; voters cast ballots for the party, not the person. Other changes have lowered voter turnout requirements, raised the threshold for entering the Duma from 5 to 7 percent, and eliminated the possibility to express a recorded protest vote. Mr. Putin also canceled elections for regional governors, blocking another avenue from which strong, independent political challengers might arise.

In January, the Federal Registration Service ordered more than half of Russia's 35 political parties to disband after they failed to meet strict new requirements, including a minimum membership of 50,000 distributed across more than half of the country's 89 regions. Remaining smaller parties are now forbidden to form electoral coalitions, which in the past enabled some to hurdle barriers for entry into the Duma.

"Elections in Russia are not as bad as they seem; they are much worse," says Nikolai Petrov, an expert with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "In the Russian political system, parties have become virtual projects, a kind of show. Elections have been stripped of any element of real competition."

United Russia, the pro-Kremlin behemoth described by Mr. Petrov as a "kind of officials' trade union," is widely expected to sweep next month's regional polls as well as the Duma elections. Held three months before the March 2008 presidential election to replace the ultrapopular Putin, the Duma contest is viewed largely as a test of public mood and a demonstration to the world of Russia's democratic credentials. Experts say Fair Russia is almost certain to come in second, taking up to 25 percent of the votes.

"[The] two mechanisms created to support [Putin] – Fair Russia and United Russia – will win," says Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected analyst. "But does the correlation between them matter much? I doubt it. The real party of power in this country is the presidential administration, and the main concern is for Putin to win."

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