Ex-owner of Yukos: leftwing forces will come to power in
MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti)-Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former owner of the Yukos oil company, published Monday his third article since he was arrested in October 2003. This time he predicted that leftwing parties would come to power in Russia, which attracted the attention of commentators in leading dailies Izvestia and Noviye Izvestia.
"Despite the scheming, the leftwing forces will win," Khodorkovsky wrote. "And they will win in a democratic manner, in full compliance with the expression of the will of the majority of the electorate."
Stanislav Belkovsky, the general director of the Council for National Strategy, agreed with Khodorkovsky. He said at least 70% of the voters had left-leaning inclinations, but the picture was marred by "a deep leadership crisis in the leftwing movement." He was primarily referring to intellectual leadership, which he said the ex-owner of Yukos wanted to assume. "Khodorkovsky is completely independent of the Kremlin now. Everything which other politicians fear has happened to him," the political scientist said.
Gleb Pavlovsky, the president of the Effective Policy Foundation, said Khodorkovsky planned to sever the connection between the centrists (United Russia) and the rightwing forces in order to make them impotent against the leftwing forces. The split centrists and right forces would lose to the union of left forces and nationalists. It would not be easy to do this, the political scientist said, though media closely associated with Yukos were conducting a propaganda campaign every day.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the political council of the Republican Party, said the advance of the left to power would depend on democrats: "Unless we create a new strong party, the left will have better chances." The politician said he was convinced that Khodorkovsky's article was a call to the opposition to unite to create a front against the current authorities. "But there are problems, as it will be difficult to unite liberals with Homeland [a left-wing patriotic party]," he said. "They have different views on the economy and politics."