Hopes dampened that Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be released from jail
PRESIDENT-ELECT VLADIMIR Putin has said Russia needs one dominant political party, on the same day outgoing head of state Dmitry Medvedev signed a law that he claims will make it easier for opposition groups to run in elections.
Putin’s words dampened hopes for major political change in Russia, as did criticism from a senior Moscow diplomat of US funding for Russian opposition groups and suggestions that Medvedev would refuse to pardon jailed tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
“In parliament there is a leading political force, which is a guarantee that the legislative process will continue in a positive way,” Putin told supporters yesterday, claiming that a strong ruling party “will allow us to take decisions, otherwise we could get into a situation where we are unable to adopt any measures”.
At about the same time, Medvedev – who on May 7th will make way for his mentor’s return to the Kremlin – was signing legislation to greatly reduce the number of signatures needed by a party to obtain formal registration.
He said officials must now have “seriously well-founded” reasons to prevent any party running in elections, but opposition groups say the authorities will continue to find pretexts for hampering their work.
Medvedev promised to loosen the state’s grip on politics when last December’s allegedly fraudulent general election triggered major protests in Moscow and other cities.
Dynamic new opposition groups also marched in huge numbers through Moscow ahead of Putin’s re-election in March, but the movement has lost considerable steam since then.
It received a boost last weekend however, when a defector from the ruling United Russia party to the opposition movement won a landslide election victory to become mayor of the city of Yaroslavl, about 260km (160 miles) northeast of Moscow.
Hundreds of volunteers travelled to Yaroslavl from Moscow to monitor the vote and combat fraud, potentially setting a precedent for other ballots around the world’s largest country, where regional governors are once more set to be elected rather than appointed by the Kremlin.
“What happened in Yaroslavl is an alarming signal for the Kremlin which can’t be discounted as some kind of anomaly,” said analyst Nikolai Petrov at the Moscow Carnegie Centre.
“The Kremlin uses as a tool which helps it achieve its elections goals and this model is in crisis now.”
Putin regularly accuses critics of being in the pay of western states, and deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said yesterday that Russia was “really concerned” about US funding of opposition groups, which was “reaching a scale that is turning into a problem in our relations”.
His comments came as Russian prosecutors accused a retired colonel of espionage for allegedly passing secret maps to the US military, and the head of the Kremlin rights council said Medvedev would not pardon Khodorkovsky, who was jailed in 2003.
Supporters say Khodorkovsky’s convictions for financial crimes are punishment for criticising Putin and funding opposition groups.
