Russian Central Electoral Committtee chairman Alexander Veshnyakov in 2003.
Photo: Dmitry Lekay
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Alexander Veshnyakov Dropped from Elections Commission
Alexander Veshnyakov will step down as the chairman of the Central Electoral Committee (TsIK) after Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday chose not to renominate him for the position. According to representatives of the opposition, Mr. Veshnyakov's ouster reflects the new role that will be played by TsIK in the upcoming federal elections, at which political expediency may take precedence over judicial integrity.
The president, the Federation Council, and the State Duma each nominate five candidates to the Central Electoral Committee. On Tuesday, while the Senate announced that it will keep its five members on the committee and the State Duma limited itself to choosing just two new members, the president left only one serving committee member in his chair: Vasily Volkov. Notably absent from the president's list was TsIK chairman Alexander Veshnyakov, who has held the position for two terms (since 1999) and had hoped to stay on for a third.
Mr. Veshnyakov did not comment yesterday on his early retirement from the committee. He himself found out about it, according to information obtained by Kommersant, only on Monday, when he was invited to a long-awaited meeting with Vladimir Putin at which the president was expected to reconfirm his confidence in Mr. Veshnyakov as the head of TsIK. However, the meeting took place only after Sunday's parliamentary elections in 14 regions were over, and it had an unexpected tone of farewell.
It is possible that the outcome of the March 11 elections, at which the two pro-Kremlin juggernauts went head to head with little interference from other parties, played a decisive role in Mr. Veshnyakov's fate. Although United Russia representatives have maintained that they would like to see Mr. Veshnyakov appointed to a third term, some in the party expressed dissatisfaction with his actions as head of the electoral committee. While he remained emphatically loyal to the Kremlin, he has recently spoken out publicly against some United Russia members and has protested many new amendments to election legislation that were initiated by United Russia.
On Monday morning, however, before his meeting with the president, Mr. Veshnyakov was careful to distance himself from his previous complaints about the party: during a press conference devoted to the results of the regional elections, he asserted that all of the fears concerning possible negative consequences of the amendments had not been justified. But that was not enough to save him. The last straw may have been the results of the elections in the Stavropol region, where United Russia garnered only 23.9% of the vote and lost to A Just Russia, which won 37.6%. According to Kommersant sources in United Russia and the TsIK, United Russia had been counting on an informal agreement that both parties would get approximately the same number of votes. But when the party demanded a recount in several precincts in which the its data showed that around 2,000 ballots had disappeared, the TsIK refused to get involved. It is possible that the leaders of "party #1" cited this incident to convince the president that the electoral commission is not yet sufficiently under the thumb of the Kremlin in the run-up to the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2008, and that United Russia successfully lobbied for Mr. Veshnyakov's removal.
That version of events is disputed by Duma deputy Gennady Raikov, who was nominated to the electoral commission by United Russia. According to Mr. Raikov, the party's decision to install Alexander Chernogorov as governor of the Stavropol region was a "tactical mistake" and that the party itself is thus to blame for the Stavropol failure.
Whether the Kremlin was actually satisfied with Mr. Veshnyakov's work or not will become clear when he is named to his new position. Yesterday information referencing sources in the State Duma and the Kremlin suggested that "Veshnyakov will be offered a new high-level position." However, members of the TsIK foresee only some kind of honorary ambassadorship to an EU country where he can champion Russia's image and international elections standards (which was Mr. Veshnyakov's dissertation topic).
Representatives of the opposition speculate that Mr. Veshnyakov's departure is tied with changes in the electoral system, the shrinking role played by elections in the country's political life, and the transformation of the TsIK into a toothless executor of the Kremlin's every wish, whether legal or not. TsIK advisory member Vadim Solovyov, a Communist Party deputy, believes that "Veshnyakov was no longer sufficiently loyal. The Kremlin demands blind obedience and total control. Veshnyakov never would have agreed to wholesale fraud, and so he had to go."
The question of Mr. Veshnyakov's successor remains unanswered. He could be replaced by one of the new appointees, perhaps even one who does not have an education in law (a recent amendment removes that criterion for an appointment to the TsIK) and who thus may find it difficult to parse the subtleties of election legislation. According to Vasily Volkov, however, "the fact that more than half (9 out of 15) of the current members of the TsIK are still in their posts will allow the new chairman to rely on their experience."
At least two non-lawyers are among the new appointees to the commission: LDPR deputy Vladimir Churov, who worked with Vladimir Putin during the president's tenure as mayor of St. Petersburg, and Public Chamber chief of staff Igor Fedorov, who earlier managed public relations for the presidential administration and several financial agencies (including Evrofinance and Sistema). According to Mr. Fedorov, his appointment to the electoral commission came as a complete surprise. He told Kommersant that he is not yet prepared to comment on his future work, since he is just beginning to "think through the situation"; he has dealt with elections before only in his work with the government agency Roskhrankultura, which has oversight over the media's compliance with the law. It is not likely that either Mr. Fedorov or Mr. Churov, who was chosen as an "observer," according to sources on the commission, will be picked to chair the TsIK.
Possible nominees for the TsIK's top post include United Russia politicians (there are now four on the commission) Stanislav Vavilov, the chairman of the Federation Council committee on law and justice, and Gennady Raikov. Mr. Vavilov, however, although he is a long-standing acquaintance of Kremlin administration head Sergei Sobyanin, is an avowedly non-public politician. Meanwhile, Mr. Raikov told Kommersant that he does not intend to go for the top job. Yesterday United Russia general council secretary Vyacheslav Volodin said that the head of the commission would probably be "someone independent."
Another of the president's nominees, Igor Borisov, is vaguely reminiscent of Alexander Veshnyakov himself. Mr. Borisov heads the Russian Social Institute for Election Rights and is known in expert circles to have a fairly critical outlook on Russia's election legislation. Incidentally, he also told Kommersant that his appointment was entirely unexpected.
TsIK member Elena Dubrovina told Kommersant that "there is no clear chairman" among the members recently nominated to the commission. Consultations will be held on the topic until March 26, after which the new commission will hold its first session and chose the chairman, his deputy, and the commission's secretary.
Irina Nagornykh
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 14, 2007
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