I forward this mainly as an illustration of why, given present circumstances, centralization of power in the Kremlin is actually a good thing.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ----------------------------
gazeta.ru May 20, 2002 FSB general takes control of Smolensk By Yelena Shishkounova, Alexander Kornilov
Generals from Russia's special services continue their triumphant march through the Russian regions. According to preliminary reports, General Viktor Maslov of the FSB has won the governor’s post in the Smolensk Region, leaving his key rival - the incumbent governor and communist Alexander Prokhorov - only 6 per cent behind.
On Sunday, May 19, Russia’s Smolensk Region voted to name a new governor for the border region situated southwest of Moscow. Of the six candidates, Prokhorov and the head of the local FSB General Maslov were considered the most likely winners.
Maslov, who enjoyed the strong backing of the Kremlin’s envoy to the district Georgiy Poltachneko and several major enterprises in the region, was often compared in the local media to the governor of Voronezh and former chief of the Voronezh regional FSB directorate Viktor Kulakov who won his post in 2000.
Despite being a member of the Communist Party, incumbent governor Prokhorov had always displayed exceptional allegiance to President Putin. The Kremlin, therefore, had no particular reason to oust him in the governor’s elections.
With this in mind, Moscow assumed a wait-and-see attitude, because either outcome was going to be equally favourable for the Kremlin. This means that General Maslov was probably backed solely by the Kremlin envoy in a bid to prove his own efficiency.
As a result of the Kremlin’s neutral stance, the pre-election struggle for the governor’s seat started to resemble a gangland war. The campaign was strewn with criminal clashes, murder attempts and arsons, despite earlier reports of a calm and incident-free contest.
One of the most recent murder attempts was committed on May 16, just three days prior to the vote. Vice-governor Anatoly Makarenko was ambushed by unknown gunmen in the vicinity of his country house. Two men armed with submachine guns opened fire at Makarenko’s car killing his driver and seriously wounding his bodyguard. The official emerged unscathed from the attack.
Makarenko had no doubts whatsoever concerning the identities of those behind the attempt. As soon as he reached his office that day, the vice-governor accused the FSB general Viktor Maslov of everything that had happened to him en route to Smolensk. By attempting to murder the deputy governor, Maslov was trying to project an image that the incumbent administration was enveloped in crime and that the time was ripe for a change in leadership, Makarenko charged.
Given Makarenko’s commercial activities in the past (before becoming a public official he headed the Yartsevo distillery) and his professional activities of recent years (under Prokhorov, he had been in charge of managing regional finances), the investigators are still at a loss as to the true motives behind the attack on the vice-governor.
Earlier, unknown arsonists burned down the country-houses of two top officials from the governor’s election headquarters and robbed one of the employees. On April 27, a blast tore through an office building occupied by Prokhorov’s election headquarters. Vice governor Vladimir Gorkov said the event was ''a terrorist attack'' and steadfastly denied all claims that the governor’s supporters could have staged the explosion in order to boost his rating.
Such dubious methods of winning the public’s support meant that the more orthodox campaigning faded somewhat into the background. One of the candidates, cameraman of the state-owned TV and radio broadcaster ''Smolensk'' Dmitry Pavlov, decided to take the struggle to court.
Pavlov, who was nominated by the local branch of the Union of the Rightist Forces, filed a lawsuit against the incumbent Prokhorov, accusing him of abusing his governor’s position in his election campaign – using so-called “administrative resources”. After three days of litigation the court rejected the journalist’s claim. On Saturday, the court reviewed and rejected another lawsuit, again filed by Pavlov, but this time against Maslov.
Viktor Maslov won Sunday’s election, receiving 40.65 per cent of the vote, while his main rival Alexander Prokhorov gained 34.54 per cent, the Smolensk regional election committee reported on Monday morning, after processing 97 per cent of the ballot papers.
Under regional electoral legislation, a candidate only needs to get a simple majority of the votes, provided, however, that the number of votes cast against all candidates does not exceed the winning amount. Therefore, Maslov was proclaimed the winner even before all the ballot papers had been processed.
Another 14 per cent of the voters opted for other candidates, in particular, the head of the Smolensk administration Ivan Averchenkov, who came third with 8.25 per cent. Professor of Smolensk University for Humanities Valery Fateyev scored 3.01 per cent, while Dmitry Pavlov gathered 1.12 per cent. Director-general of the financial industrial concern Flora-Group Andrei Atrokhov managed to win the support of only 0.53 per cent of the electorate.
According to the chairman of the Smolensk regional election committee Anatoly Abramkin, General Maslov outstripped his key rival by only 6 per cent or some 20,000 votes. Given the low turnout – only 40.23 per cent of eligible voters took part in the polls – and the number of those who voted against all the candidates (9.06 per cent), the difference between the two leading candidates turned out to be very small.
Despite the extremely dirty pre-election campaign, electoral authorities reported no serious violations in the course of voting. That means that Prokhorov will have no grounds to contest the victory of his rival.
General Maslov’s victory in Smolensk is another example of an FSB general successfully competing in Russia’s regional elections with the backing of the Kremlin. Not so long ago, on April 28, another FSB general became president in the North-Caucasian republic of Ingushetia. Murat Zyazikov won the post scoring 10 per cent more than his key rival, Alikhan Amirkhanov in the run-off. Amirkhanov had the strong backing of the ex-president of Ingushetia Ruslan Aushev, and judging by opinion polls enjoyed more popularity in the republic than the Kremlin-backed general. In the first round Amirkhanov had received almost twice as many votes as the general.