Power Struggle Splits Communists
By Francesca Mereu Staff Writer
MT
Gennady Zyuganov
The Communist Party's leadership remains too embroiled in an internal power struggle to pay much attention to the presidential race, leaving its candidate, Nikolai Kharitonov, high and dry, party officials said.
The fight between party leader Gennady Zyuganov and Gennady Semigin over control of the party has become so bitter that the party has all but stopped its political activities and is doing little to support Kharitonov's campaign, they said.
"Zyuganov has lost interest in the campaign. He thinks that after having put forward one of our party fellows, the rest is up to him [Kharitonov]," said Ilya Ponomaryov, the party's chief information officer.
Kharitonov's campaign is further hampered because the party war chest is empty, the party officials said. The party's financial backers are waiting for the Communists to resolve their problems before forking over more money. In addition, the party had to give money back to the businessmen who paid for spots on the party list but failed to get into the State Duma in the Dec. 7 elections, said a party official close to Zyuganov, speaking on condition of anonymity. A spot at the top of the party list reportedly went for $1.5 million to $2 million.
Semigin, a Duma deputy who was a deputy speaker in the last Duma, made a bid to become the party's presidential candidate but lost to Kharitonov at a party congress in December by a 123-to-105 vote.
Since then Semigin, a wealthy and well connected businessman, has annoyed many Communists by helping former party member Sergei Glazyev in his campaign for president, Ponomaryov said.
Semigin, who rarely speaks to the press, could not be reached over the course of several days for comment. His secretary, Viktoria Korolyova, said either that he was not in his office or that he was busy.
Kharitonov confirmed that party coffers are low. "The party has very little money," he said in an interview this week while campaigning in the Krasnodar region. "We don't have the resources the Kremlin has to run our campaign." But he said the party was supporting his candidacy.
Since Kharitonov is close to Zyuganov, his winning the party's presidential nomination was seen as Zyuganov's victory over Semigin. But the Communist official said the party remains split and this is unlikely to change until a new leader is picked at a party congress in June.
"For the party to chose either Zyuganov or Semigin would be equal to committing suicide," the official said. "The party is in need of renovation and the delegates are likely to opt for a compromise figure." He predicted that Ivan Melnikov, the party's deputy chairman, would be chosen to replace Zyuganov as a temporary compromise. Melnikov, considered a moderate in the party, is closer to Zyuganov than to Semigin.
Zyuganov, who has run and lost in the past two presidential elections, decided not to take part in the March election, saying that after the Communists' defeat in the Duma elections, they needed to put forward a new candidate.
He decided to put his efforts, instead, into winning over the delegates to June's party congress, but he has had little success, the party source said.
As part of the effort to reduce Semigin's influence, the Communists said late last month that they were withdrawing from the Popular Patriotic Union, or NPSR. Semigin heads the executive committee of NPSR, an umbrella group of 15 political movements with the Communists at its core that was formed before the 1996 presidential election.
In addition to having his own personal wealth, Semigin is powerful because of his links to various businesses and oligarchs, said Dmitry Orlov, an independent political analyst. His starting point in politics was as a lobbyist, through a group he established called Congress of Russian Business Circles.
In the Duma elections, Semigin was backed by Russian Aluminum, the country's largest aluminum producer, which is controlled by Oleg Deripaska.
Semigin is likely to be helping Glazyev not only with the organization of his campaign but with attracting funding, Orlov said.
Glazyev was co-leader of the nationalist Rodina bloc, which was formed a few months before the Duma elections as a Kremlin project to take votes away from the Communists. He is running for president without Rodina's support and, especially with Semigin behind him, has the potential to win over some of the traditionally Communist vote.
The backstage intrigues between Semigin and Zyuganov have annoyed not only many party members, but also the party's financial backers.
Businessmen who were elected on the party list "are waiting for us to find a solution to our problems, and only after that will they give us money again," the party source said.
The party had more than 40 businessmen on its party list, and only 10 of them made it into the Duma.
Together with old party sponsors like Viktor Vidmanov, the president of the agro-industrial group Rosagropromstroi, and Igor Igoshin, general director of agricultural group Real-Agro, the party faction has three representatives of oil major Yukos: Alexei Kondaurov, an aide to the president of Yukos-Moskva; Sergei Muravlenko, a Yukos shareholder; and Yuly Kvitsinsky, a former deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Norway. Yukos paid for Kvitsinsky's spot on the list, the party said.
A Yukos spokeswoman, who would not give her name, denied that the company is financing the Communist Party, although the Duma deputies who have links to Yukos may be giving their own money. "It is a personal decision and not linked to the company," she said.
The other business representatives in the Communist Duma faction are linked to regional businesses.
Kharitonov said the party may still decide to pull him out of the race if he is denied access to television, as the party was during the Duma campaign.
But, according to the party source, the Kremlin wants Kharitonov to run to help give the election the appearance of legitimacy.
"People from the Kremlin" are putting pressure on Zyuganov to keep the party's candidate in the election, the source said.
-- Michael Pugliese