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Letter to the editor

Opposition says it's stifled

Kremlin has made Russia look like just one party is running, they say.

By Washington Post
Published December 1, 2007

MOSCOW - Across Russia, officials loyal to the Kremlin have used unprecedented administrative pressure and harassment to disrupt the electoral campaigns of opposition parties and maximize the vote of United Russia, the party that President Vladimir Putin is leading into Sunday's parliamentary elections, according to opposition party members, independent monitors and political analysts.

Millions of pieces of opposition campaign literature have been seized or destroyed, those observers report. Parties have found themselves unable to secure billboard or other advertising space, so that on the streets of Moscow and other cities it appears that only one party, United Russia, is running. Campaign workers complain of harassment by police.

Putin has dismissed the complaints. "We want to hold honest elections that are as transparent and open as possible, without organizational failures and problems," he said. "I am confident that this upcoming election will be of precisely this kind."

But around the country, people tell a different story. Employees and students at state enterprises and institutions, including hospitals and universities, have come under pressure from their bosses and deans to vote for United Russia or face retribution, according to activists.

On national and regional television stations, which are controlled by the Kremlin, opposition parties have received brief, nonprime-time slots for political statements and been neglected or derided in news programming. Putin and other United Russia leaders, in contrast, are the subject of glowing reports.

In interviews, organizers in 10 regions for opposition groups including the Communist Party, the Union of Right Forces (known by its Russian initials SPS), Yabloko and Fair Russia uniformly complained of official harassment, of being shut out of the media and of voters being threatened with loss of livelihood or position if they fail to vote for United Russia.

In the Siberian region of Kemerovo, for instance, opposition parties said they learned that the governor had demanded undated resignation letters from all district administrators, to take effect if United Russia draws less than 70 percent of the vote in their areas.

The district administrators, in turn, demanded resignation letters from their deputies. "You now have bureaucrats threatening pensioners that their heat will be cut off unless they vote for United Russia," Alexey Roshin, a Communist Party official in Kemerovo, said in a telephone interview. "And you know, this is Siberia. It's cold here."

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law suspending Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty effective Dec. 12, the Kremlin announced.

Russia will halt inspections and verifications of its military sites by NATO countries and will no longer be obligated to limit the number of conventional weapons deployed west of the Urals. Putin called for Russia's temporary withdrawal from the treaty amid mounting anger in the Kremlin over U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe.

"This is a mistake," said U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. "It is Russia unilaterally walking out of one of the most important arms control regimes of the last 20 years."

[Last modified December 1, 2007, 01:11:39]