Everyone I have talked to
about elections noted that this was Yabloko's best electoral
campaign since its formation. Such a campaign could not
fail to generate a significant increase votes.
Where has this increase gone?
Answering this question, it would be appropriate to cite
a well-known expert on the elections, D.Oreshkin: "Between
13 to 15 million bulletins are dropped into the ballot
box directly by governors and presidents." The divergence
of the voting results for Yavlinsky at the elections on
March 26 raises many questions.
The most difficult to explain
is a two-fold increase in the number of votes for Yavlinsky
in Moscow, compared to the Duma elections. This was observed
in a situation where most of the regions demonstrated
a contraction in or constant level of Yavlinsky's electorate.
This phenomenon could be attributed
to the greater impact on the electorate in Moscow by the
central mass media, which was a key factor for Yavlinsky's
electoral head-quarters.
However, this assumption disproves
the situation in Moscow region, where the central mass
media are also represented in full, but Yavlinsky's increased
by only 2%. I think that is little sense in investigating
which particular words or actions of Grigory Yavlinsky
managed to transform the moods of Moscovites to back him.
I think that the explanation of “exclusive” voting in
Moscow lies in the aforementioned words of D.Oreshkin.
It is unlikely that the governors,
or other officials in the regions who provided administrative
“support” at the ballot boxes acted on the direct instructions
of the Kremlin (although this version cannot be ruled
out entirely).
Most likely the decisive factor
here was their desire to serve the Kremlin well, by providing
a high level of electoral backing for Putin. The parliamentary
elections had already demonstrated that this individual
is iprone to fall victim to governor toadyism, attacked
by the Kremlin mass media. In December 1999 the “Fatherland-All
Russia” bloc was such a target, in March 2000, it was
Grigory Yavlinsky. (By the way, the communists have never
been targets of media attacks).
The absence of significant
falsifications in Moscow may be attributed to the solidarity
of Yuri Luzhkov, who displayed courage and did not express
such equivocal loyalty to the Kremlin. Grigory Yavlinsky
is the only Russian politician to have challenged the
Kremlin, instead of joining in the laudatory choir of
Vladimir Putin’s sycophants and concluding some back-stage
deals with him.
