Russian Opposition Leader i like saying that they may be sidelined last suspect that poisoning but his allies have made red gains in elections they were local polls one easily by the ruling party all signs of discontent giving you a reason to worry this story. Hello welcome to the show im samis a than now it was an election the ruling party saw as a test of its standing with the people and it appears at least some russians have hinted ethanol while the pro Kremlin Russia united party is on track for a sweeping overall victory in the local polls allies of alexina valmy also celebrating their gains in siberia may be symbolic but significant after the Opposition Leaders suspected poisoning did the voting strategy pay off or is the tide turning against those who have dominated russian politics for 20 years. All right lets bring in our guests into the show now we have joining us moscow victor all of its lead analyst at the center for actual politics a think tank in london samuel green director of the Russia Institute it Kings College london and coauthor of putin versus the people and the belfast alex teves all of lecturer in modern european history and russia expert at Queens University belfast a warm welcome to everyone if i could stop haps with samuel so was this a free and fair election. Not entirely no i mean its weve seen reports are on the ground very of election irregularities of the current weve become used to recent elections over the last decade and a half or so they also took a page from the constitutional clever sign that they held earlier this year in which they spread their voting over number of days in this case 3 days which left a lot of room for early voting which of course is an monitor of all 5 foreign action monitors and so theres the potential problem we dont really know about but you know the reality is that this is you know this was not a level Playing Field long before anybody got the ballot right so theres only one access to the bell is on even access to the media there is destruction of evil to fundraise and to campaign right so the idea that this is are free and fair you know frankly falls apart or really anybody get a chance to vote oh let me take that point to victor in moscow so that is a common sentiment we hear when you talk to people outside of russia. As well as some people who were protesting last year in the streets of moscow how do you think most people now will be looking at the electoral process victor those in russia. Well the decision to spread the voting process over 3 of these of course limited opportunities for independent minute theres to do their job in the 1st these of the process also some of the electoral some of these socalled voting booths were actually placed in the very strange polices there were several that were actually on literally on stumps and the Central Election Commission in russia today officially said that there were these 3 stumps where the election took place somewhere from a back some were in the back of a talk and so it was very difficult to minute there and to to. Be sickly. See that those elections are transparent in fact in several agents such as the jewish autonomy as the public in the Russian Far East and in the public of thought are stunned the majority of the ballots were cast before the last day of the election when most minute those were present more than 50 percent of the balls for cast before then so it is difficult to see those elections as completely down spent at the same time several opposition candidates were able to gain to get seats in local assemblies in City Councils in tomsk and then the wish to be honest both sabian city is where this country has been rising over the past few years so there is always have been officially i think a victory for that all and United Russia Party all of its incumbents incumbents and new gubernatorial gubernatorial candidates had won but at the same time you know russia did not do so well in several ija no sense. Yes and City Councils alex and belfast will the people by the result then both of our guests. Summarizing some of the concerns and irregularities in the voting it wasnt long ago we had street protests in russia of course both houses not far away from russia were a toll on their swanton elections could we see this kind of result trigger a resurgence of protests in russia while not on this results were see today i think the key point which wouldnt be mentioned yet is the. Extremely low turnout in all those elections you have a bolt quarter of people actually bothering to turn up to vote and this poses questions both of the 3rd is why if theres a shooting calyx well because theres a general i mean theres a lot of the several factors but i think what sam was saying earlier about controlled elections in general. An even Playing Field certainly plays a part i mean general election local elections generalists tend to produce very low results and thats really as it were up for the 4th largest which why they wanted to extend this 3 days worth of voting to 3 days is wall to do grease the turnout but it doesnt seem to be working. Let me go back to vic to briefly what does this say about what the distribution of opposition wins what does it tell us about the opposition. Well there are several types of opposition parties in the russia 1st of all there is the socalled parliamentary position of which parties like the communist party of the Russian Federation the l. D. P. Are. Controlled by a not skew a puppet populist speaker of the russian duma the Just Russia Party these parties are in close correlation work in close correlation with the kremlin and they are allowed to more or less freely pureed in the russian political space and now some of these parties. Gained seats in the General Assembly is. The communist party had gained seats in several regional assemblies compared to the results in the last election cycle then there were there were several new parties which were called the socalled spoiler purchase the socalled the green alternative. The new people. And. Called for a truce. Led by a russian patriotic writer as a kind of prediction so these parties also work in close conjunction with the kremlin and they are seeking to gain the ability to get into the next russian duma when the elections are held probably next year im wondering then the parties have to take the point. Particularly bright and not and then there is a crime and you know no valley and his allies although hes obviously. In a very difficult situation as a result of the poisoning but looking at these allies can you say that the strategy around the strategy has succeeded to some extent. Well i have to some extent and i think certainly developing and his his coalition right are putting a brave face on things they have made some progress and certainly they have demonstrated the fact that you know this is not simply a moscow and St Petersburg sort of urban intelligentsia movement that it does have a nationwide following and that they have demonstrated that this strategy they have a smart voting right of picking and choosing candidates not necessarily in terms of are you logical affinity but based on really who can win who can do the job of getting you know russia candidate out of out of out of office right. There that does work right now that the electoral map does work but it works on a low level right so we seem to be successful to a certain extent in and we do parliamentary elections really mostly on municipal and City Council Elections we have not seen that be successful in the gubernatorial level where they come the really has dug his heels in midnight might be learned from this experiment when it comes to parliamentary elections. Well you know i think that its its a learning process that has to involve more than just the opposition so they can obviously trying to ramp up and they are trying to do it is whats harder to get on the ballot is much harder to compete is much harder to campaign in the country as big and complicated as russia right it is easier to get traction on local levels but local levels are also one of the areas in which people actually do still sort of believe in in politics and in the ability of an election to to bring some change bring it might have an impact in terms of the quality of your local infrastructure the quality of Health Care Education on a on a local level whereas on a National Even to a large extent on a regional level people have very broadly lost faith in the idea that an election can actually bring much change right so if you look at opinion polls if you look if you talk to people in the 2nd we tend to find is that you know most people even if they are coming out and voting were supporting tacitly united russia and what the report and where they dont necessarily believe that the country is very well government but what they dont believe and what the opposition is going on able to convince them of is that they were to bring somebody else to power whether from the systemic opposition that victor was talking about or from the the nonsystemic opposition to anything would change much in terms of their quality of the kind thats really wanted to that point alex how much impact did the poisoning of Alexei Navalny then have on the electorate when it comes to the vote apathy situation which family was talking about. Yeah thats was a very interesting point because this was the biggest summation attempt in russian politics since 2015 with when the new insoles was murdered and it seems to me that the cutest disproportioned fact do nationally particular with germany and there are legal ripples in inside russia so far as the elections are concerned which is a very strange phenomena because it was fixed russian domestic projects much more than anything internationally how well i would just say that. I think its very difficult to judge how far the small voting is actually effective because whenever there is a petition candidate wins you know that position as it was because of small voting but that doesnt play you know with local elections are notoriously. Local factors as well one of the one of the fact is then that not well being analyzed in the picture here while you can have a whole row of the. Range of local issues thrown in as as was sam was mentioning from local infrastructure to local issues local candidates and so forth i mean again the success in those it gives can domes but also area you know open eyes to. See just with very high because the universe to city of the notice of it has a. Russian academy of Science Branch there and so forth so you have a very kind of similar profile to mosco St Petersburg so his. City intelligentsia seems to be voting for for the for the position muslim position so forth but whether this is at least a breakthrough nationally is very difficult to predict because again of those considerations specific boulders will not be rigged to get it and so because the country vic though we often ask the question when theres elections in russia what this says about the state of the opposition how fragmented they are. What does it say about the popularity of lot of mia putin right now do you think. Well. Ratings for his popularity has been in decline over the last several months and actually more than a year. Across different specters of Russian Society and and so has the popularity of the rolling United Russia Party and in fact. That attempt to bring new the socalled Spoiler Party is that work in conjunction with the kremlin that they talked about several minutes ago that attempt is connected with the concern with camerons concerns. About. About the next duma the next Parliament Elections that will come up next year and so callen is hoping that some of that this content is going to benefit the spoiler parties that it controls or that it works with rather than nonsystemic opposition parties and so their concerns about the rising popularity of opposition parties is that these concerns are prevalent and the kremlin mir station is staking steps that it feels could be most effective to tamp down the the opposition activists both in the far east in sabian and in other regions of russia so the Upcoming Elections to the state duma still not been scheduled yet but will likely be scheduled in the near future they may bring might a much higher level of public activity here than the local elections that we have just witnessed a very interesting strategy which victor is explaining that samuel when you look at a picture like that you know the ruling party has done well in these elections in terms of number of wins that popularity is explaining his. In declining by the same time theyve been working on this strategy to try and prop up perhaps other quote unquote opposition parties that assumably would back the ruling party what it what does all of that mean then for expectations for next years parliamentary polls. Well i think it means unexpectedness as if you were saying or fundamentally on certain i mean the reality is that there was a period of time after the annexation of crimea after the launch of more in Eastern Ukraine and conflict with the west right in which food general was able to divorce his popularity from what was going on in the country what was going on in peoples lives and we had you know 5 now 6 years of the declining stagnant incomes right we. Dont really see a light at the end of the economic tunnel for most ordinary russians and there was a time in which people sense a sort of connection to their Political Community and sense of euphoria over crimea was able to do to prop up with his popularity and to a certain extent united russia on his coattails but that has come to an end and people really are looking for solutions that will begin to make their lives better and as i said earlier we most people still leave very much to go not by the bootstraps an individual just approach to their livelihoods but increasingly you know that is eating into enthusiasm for the kremlin the cover the course you mentioned dellums earlier but you also look at places like the Russian Far East or recently in and because a son or or in northern russia in which you know people have been really upset and angry why some of the things that become has done either in managing regional or local politics or in terms of environmental degradation or or other policies at which people take offense and will come out into the streets to defend their their interests what the grandmother wants to avoid is a repeat of the dont lose scenario in which you wind up with. Such discontent and such mobilization that you can really only put down through. Through violence that is a scenario that almost never ends well for our for the people in charge and so the question is can they find something that will. Generate a degree even to see as im already to demobilize the opposition hands of the elections in. For the do more for the parliament we dont yet know what thats going to be but the kremlin doesnt know thats one reason its using these elections now as an opportunity to do experiments and rejected things at the wall and see what sticks so to be a lot of analysis happening in the around office after after these votes are counted right so its a period of uncertainty but let me take that point back to victor in moscow whats the view from moscow does anyone believe. As uncertain as things may look for the parliamentary polls does anyone in russia really think that the opposition is Strong Enough to unseat the United Russia Party the you know the comments all phenomena that we hear the opposition is simply too weak to disorganized too fragmented and doesnt have a common message beyond that skit hooten out. Well of course that is correct 1st of all the United Russia Party has the administrative resource behind it. We have seen that the electoral procedures themselves have been changed they were. Ruling party asparagus is in the more effective fashion to increase its chances of. Victory in various regions and on various levels both local and federal levels and we have also seen as you correctly pointed out that Opposition Party is especially nonsystemic opposition parties are quite disorganized they cannot. They have not shown the ability to act inside there is. In the various agents they have also been pressured significant ways by various state institutions so it would be very difficult to to imagine a scenario. In the nearest future where the united United Russia Party would be seated or taken down from its majority or by by within the specter of russian electoral law now the Economic Situation in russia continues to worsen and discontent both political and economic keeps rising a both in moscow and in the regions that that political calculus that the kremlin relies on the right now it could change and in fact it could change very fast and then the political situation could look very different in a very short amount of time if if there is a big difference to the extend extent of a lot better routes or is that too much of a far fetched scenario right now. Well we have actually seen that the situation below us has gone from more or less stable even though in the last election cycles and bill it was because we had also seen some. Of them to put them down but never before in the last 26 years of look at bankers at all have we seen anything on the scale that we have seen since the august 8th or 9th elections and we have seen and the kremlin has also looked at how quickly the situation in belarus destabilized how wide the discontent is and how many people are actually willing to come out on the streets and protest despite heavy measures being taken against them by police and other forces and this of course raises concerns in moscow raises concerns in the kremlin about how stable the city how long the situation could be could be kept within the. Normalcy and the current political stability here. If the Economic Situation changes glad you marry and live in a father political factors government let me take that point and expand on it with alex perhaps how important how key the Economic Conditions between now and the next elections to the fate of united russia to the fate of a lot of mid to themself. Well i always give them you know they will going through the same process of. Fighting the consequences will they go on the viral slowed down and so forth ill just say that rossi is a yes there has been a long decline in real wages and the Living Conditions and so forth but things are still going to religious layer of ok. And also printing has it going to what large resources in terms of its financial will be digital home pump money into economy and its you should have us. Spend rizal or its in your spending prior to the election so i dont think there was something unexpected happens in the Current Trends i think that can handle the the economists olfa but i think what you see just going back to bell it was a bit i mean i think they are learning the lessons from it all should be learning lessons from it thats you have to walk a very fine line between managing the elections and turning links into something completely meaningless and actually come to productive like happened in belarus so they have to make sure that there is to some degree a sufficient degree of legitimacy within the elections and thats why they produce all these new bodies they produce thats the whole there is electional fault that fault is not excessively outrageous isnt a good bill or worse or what happened in 2010011 in russia with mass protest against the electoral results then sol but yeah there are there are theres a quite alone range of things they still can do in their possession in terms of all financial policy bending and. Twisting the electoral field do they do that to their benefit which prevents. Things of that happening bellerose but again things are not great for them form you know long term structural factors. Which is popularity of. Lowering your living wages and living a living. Stunts in general and also theyre going to get general tightness you know that people were not very enthusiastic about which is research thats hes just been there for 20 years and will be another. 12 to 16 years again so all those things dont play well for granted but its i wouldnt expect a huge. Upset like it was and below is not yet anyway all right time will tell i guess and we do have time to come back and look at this as the days unfold and fortunately for now we are out of time so lets thank our guests for joining us on this show victor all of it samuel green and alex. 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