MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vasily Kononenko). -- The Russian right wing, or to be precise, the liberal political parties, are continuing to surprise Russians.
In the last six months, they have made at least three attempts to work out a common strategy to contest the 2007 parliamentary elections. All proved unsuccessful. They then decided to draw on the vestiges of their former glory and set up a new, united democratic party on the basis of the Union of Right Forces (SPS), which is a party that pursues liberal economic policies, Yabloko, and some other small parties. A young provincial SPS activist was elected to head the party in the hope that he would be seen as a young Boris Nemtsov: vigorous, combative, and not beholden to the oligarchs. But despite the hopes of the puppeteers, neither Yavlinksy nor other democrats have found a common language with the young SPS leader.
The independent and invariably oppositional deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov and the former chess champion Garry Kasparov then suggested using the tiny Republican Party of Russia as a common democratic platform. This idea was kicked about for a couple of months and was then quietly shelved.
Eventually, the party strategists came up with an idea that was patently unrealistic: to put Mikhail Khodorkovsky, imprisoned oil tycoon, on the liberal throne. This outrageous idea is an outright provocation because neither its authors, nor the oligarch himself, who is currently confined to a crowded prison cell, believe for a moment that it has any chance of success. It is clear to everyone that Khodorkovsky will soon lose his right to elect and be elected for a period of nine years.
It is not difficult to guess what lies behind all these games. A failure to register Khodorkovsky's application will provide a pretext to claim that the authorities are afraid of him. The liberal leaders - Vladimir Ryzhkov and Irina Khakamada - will therefore be able to justify their disgraceful defeat at the next elections where they are doomed to no more than 1% of the vote. This is their current rating according to the recent public opinion polls. As seasoned democrat Alexander Yakovlev once put it, the worst thing is that all these quasi-democratic hoodlums are once again discrediting the very idea of liberalism that is still favored by millions of Russians.
Having lost all chances of mobilizing support, SPS came up with yet another "remedy." They suggested that the right and the left unite to boycott the elections to the State Duma in 2007. This initiative was put forward by Secretary of the SPS Federal Political Council Ivan Starikov. He believes that the SPS, Yabloko, the Communist Party, Rodina (Homeland) and other opposition parties could unite under the boycott banner. His supposed potential allies did not take long to respond. The Communists rejected the proposal believing, not without reason, that United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party could easily hold elections without them. Yabloko Deputy Chairman Sergey Mitrokhin did not mince his words: "A boycott is only possible from a position of strength. For the time being, the opposition cannot even get 100,000 people out onto the streets." Dmitry Polikanov, an analyst from the public opinion research centre VTsIOM, told RIA Novosti that even if the boycott scenario succeeded, the number of people abstaining from voting would only increase by a few percent. Such is the current level of popular support for the right forces.
It appears that everyone is already used to the political infighting of the right wing parties. Liberal-minded Russians have long given up any hope of hearing sensible proposals from the right wing on how life in Russia could be improved. The trouble is that our young Liberals, who live in their cocoon propped up by oligarch money, are cynically ignoring the people who they are meant to serve. The gulf between the right wing party functionaries and the liberal intelligentsia emerged long before the 2003 Duma elections, when they were refused credence.
A crack began to appear when it dawned on the millions of liberal romantics in the years of perestroika that the first wave of Yeltsin liberals, who had been swept to power, were in fact trying to improve life for just 10% of Russians, and that furthermore this 10% were not averse to breaking the law if it was in their interests. Having promised the remaining 90% percent of the people two Volga cars each in return for their privatization vouchers, the liberals simply forgot about them. Eventually, they began to look to western models, and came to understand liberalism as a political trend exclusively in the context of Western values.
But in Russia the sun rises in the East, not in the West. The true supporters of liberal ideas understood the deception and left the party caste. The liberal idea has proved effective in the world and in Russia (and not only under Alexander the Second or Stolypin). This idea of liberalism is still alive and is not in crisis. Russia still needs a genuinely democratic and liberal party that is bound to enjoy support of no less that 10%-15% of the politically active population.
