Paul
Goble
Staunton, June
22 – Citizens of Kyrgyzsan, Turkmennistan, Tajikistan and Belarus who have
residence permits in the Russian Federation have the right to vote and be
elected as deputies and mayors in local elections under the terms of a 2002 Russian
law, a step analysts say the authorities may exploit but that deprive these
votes of any legitimacy among native Russians.
In a commentary on Rosbalt.ru
yesterday, Dmitry Remizov says that this arrangement, one that the Central Election
Commission reiterated in messages to regional officials, is already leading some
candidates to try to win the votes of these non-citizens and sparking fears
that such votes might influence the outcome of elections (rosbalt.ru/federal/2013/06/21/1143842.html).
Oleg Gavryushenko, a specialist on
electoral law, said that in Tyumen, “the electoral commission is in a state of
shock” of the possibility that non-citizens can simply show their residence
permits and must be given a ballot. No
one in local electoral commissions “has seen that happen before.”
Local officials are scrambling to
make sense of this. In Ekaterinburg, the election commission issued a decree
specifying that Kyrgyz citizens have the right to be elected deputies in the
municipal council but not mayor but that Tajiks need not just a residence
permit but dual citizenship to take part in the voting.
This confusion, Remizov says, has
its roots in a June 12, 2002 law. That measure specified that “on the basis of
international agreements … foreign citizens constantly living on the territory
of corresponding municipal formations have the right to vote and be elected to
organs of local government, to participate in other electoral activities in
such campaigns, and also to take part local referenda on the very same basis as
citizens of the Russian Federation.”
Opponents of this arrangement, the
Rosbalt.ru commentator continues, say that it violates the constitution and
raises questions in the minds of Russian voters about just what the top
leadership of the country may be conceding to outsiders in accords with such
neighboring countries.
Not surprisingly, he adds, this has
sparked an intense exchange of opinions in the Russian blogosphere, with “some
comparing the situation to France where presidential candidate Francois Holland
won the election by promising immigrants ‘integration’ into French society. The
same thing could happen in Russia as well.”
Tyumen election officials say that can’t
happen because “Asians with resident permits for the region can be counted on
one hand” given that ”the majority of
gastarbeiters do not have any registration.” But “this is the situation today –
and in Tyumen,” Remizov notes, and asks rhetorically what might happen if the
ratings of the authorities fall and they see the easily intimidated gastarbeiters
as a new electoral resource?
Yevgeny Potapov the director of the
Institute for the Development and Modernization of Social Ties, says that the
authorities are likely to do just that and that their recent instructions to
regional and local electoral commissions are “a trial balloon of the party of
power,” one designed to see how Russian citizens will react.
But other experts are less
disturbed, Aleksey Sinelnikov, a
political scientist who serves on the electoral commission in Rostov-on-Don,
says that the few votes by Central Asians won’t matter. However, if one follows
Moscow’s logic, he suggests “it would be logical to offer the vote to robots,
zombies and extra-terrestrials as well.”
According to Remizov, the participation
of non-citizens in Russian local elections will cost those polls of their “remaining
legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian people.
And that in turn means that some will begin to use in local political
struggles other non-parliamentary methods” to defend and advance their interests.
No comments:
Post a Comment