Russia before the Presidential Election

RUSSIA BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

Remarks by Dr. Irina Khakamada, Russian Presidential Candidate

Moderator: Anders Åslund, Director, Russian and Eurasian Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Washington, D.C.
Monday, January 26, 2004
5:00 - 6:30 pm

Transcipt by:
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.

ANDERS ÅSLUND: (In progress) – now the only, should I say liberal or democratic right-wing – or center-right candidate in their presidential election.

Irina Khakamada has a long and glorious political career behind her, and we hope an even better before her. She has been a member of the Duma – correct? – for 10 years, elected in one-man constituencies. And after the disarray, after the parliamentary elections, she’s the person who decided that she should stand in the presidential elections.

So I apologize for the delay here in the beginning. That was a slight misunderstanding. And, please, the floor is yours.

IRINA KHAKAMADA: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I could speak in English but now I have decided to participate in our presidential elections as a candidate, actually opposite to Mr. Putin and the Kremlin. That is why I prefer to speak in Russian. Thank you very much for your cooperation. (All further remarks through translator.)

After the parliamentary elections many observers were shocked. Everybody was surprised that the democrats had lost the elections and had no parliamentary representation anymore. Now that you look at it, if you analyze what had happened over the previous four years in Russia, the result was anything but surprising; it was quite predictable.

Over the four previous years the authorities had done everything they could to stifle whatever political competition they might have. But again, as you well know, independent media had been all but exterminated. A very large number of ex-KGB personnel went into politics and they were very quickly promoted to a very high-ranking position, both at the federal and regional level. Under the disguise of an effort to control oligarchs, the authorities began to arrest major businessmen who were not personally loyal to the regime. And the courts, that are not truly independent, do nothing but just follow instructions from the Kremlin.

On a parallel basis, some progressive developments were taking place as well. The parliament was passing liberal legislation. Most of those laws had to do with liberalizing the economy. And on 9/11, President Putin was the first head of state to express condolences to President Bush and the American people, and that ushered in a new era of the U.S.-Russia relationship and also helped launch the global war on terror.

And all the statements made by the Russian president, again over the course of those four years, were highly democratic, and the president said all the right words. He made all the statements that the domestic democrats and the Western governments wanted to hear from him. And that was taking place against the background of an ever-increasing number of acts of terror and mop-up military operations in Chechnya.

And independent forces were slowly fading away, and what we now see in terms of the media situation in Russia is a throwback to the Soviet-style propaganda, something that a democratic society cannot possibly have, instead of an independent source of information. And before we knew, the main subject of discussion in the domestic press was who, how, and when made a deal with the Kremlin.

The last week before the parliamentary elections looked particularly strange. Mr. Chubais and Mr. Yavlinsky were bending backwards to try and talk to President Putin and to get some exposure and airtime as a result of that, and to cross the 5 percent cut-off threshold. And the result of course was that everybody who had tried to make some kind of a deal with the Kremlin ended up as losers.

So what is it that we now have as a result of this four-year period of the presidency – we have a political power structure which has virtually been privatized by the bureaucrats. We have two governments. One of them is unconstitutional and it happens to be the president’s administration, which, however, controls all areas, such as economic decision-making on the domestic scene. It also builds political parties and builds a managed political competition. At the same time, the president’s administration is now seeing a much-increased role of the security services and power agencies. And there is the formal government, which is led by Mr. Kasyanov, which acts on cue from the Kremlin, and on the rare occasions that it says something different from what the Kremlin has been saying, it is disciplined right away.

We have an upper house in our parliament, which is not elected but appointed, virtually appointed, and it is as loyal personally to the president as can be. We have the lower house where artificial methods – non-democratic methods have been successfully employed to ensure that the party of the incumbent has become triumphant, a party that does not really have a platform – a leg to stand on, whose key message is that we are the president’s party and we side with the president at all times.

We also of course have governors who, despite being elected, can be fired immediately at any point in time. And we also have local governments, self-governments, which are in the middle of being made part of the power structure by way of adopting appropriate legislation. We have a 100 percent federal monopoly of all electronic media, despite the specific ownership structure of an individual media outlet. And we also have regional media outlets, which are controlled by local administrations. We also have seven federal districts and we have several presidential representatives who are monitoring the developments in those districts and are enforcing the Kremlin’s policies in those districts despite the presidential representative being a completely unconstitutional position.

To sum it up, I do not think that a political system like that can be referred to as a democracy, let alone a mature democracy. So my position is that it’s high time that truth be told about Russia and what is happening in Russia be discussed in an open manner, and I believe that the presidential race provides an opportunity for doing just that. I understand that to a certain extent, by participating in these elections I make them more legitimate, but I think one of the key problems in Russia that, with all these developments in the background, we have stopped thinking about our people; we only stop to think about what the Kremlin is doing, what the Kremlin is happy with and what it is displeased with.

During the next four years, if there is not a voice heard by the people that will be even slightly different from the voice of the incumbent authorities, the Russians may just become completely disillusioned about democracy in Russia and start thinking that democracy is not an option in Russia; it is just not feasible. You will know of course that Mr. Putin enjoys a popularity rating of about 70 percent and it’s quite possible that the rating will go up even higher, which to me is not by any means testament to democracy or an indication of democracy; rather it points to an absolutely authoritarian system where there is just one leader, and that leader can be as popular as he chooses to be.

And at the end of the day there is no separation of powers. Everything that is taking place in Russia the so-called vertical power structure is responsible for, but while they are responsible for it, it is not accountable for it to the people. A mechanism for such accountability would be provided by elections, but it is not accountable. And it may eventually be held responsible for what it is doing but it is not something that is happening now.

What is happening in Russia and what may be coming together in Russia reminds one of Chilean or Chinese experience. However, there is going to be one major difference, and that is that the bureaucracy in Russia is so large, so vast that it will make any repetition of the Chinese or Chilean model ineffective and unsuccessful in Russia because in addition to being huge in terms of numbers, it also has completely different motivation.

The bureaucracy goes back to the USSR times, and as far as the civilian part of the bureaucracy, its key objective is to perpetuate itself. And the military part of the bureaucracy wants the old times back; it wants to take revenge. And I would attribute the current relative stability and growth of the economy to a favorable market situation and oil prices. And I believe if those things are taken out of the equation, the situation will become different, and already there are certain early warnings of that and early signs of that, such as that our submarines are sinking, people are freezing to death literally, and the war in Chechnya is still going on, and acts of terror are still taking place domestically. The health system is crumbling apart. Poverty, already massive, is growing, and there are no real structural changes in the economy, and if serious difficulties present themselves, such as reduced oil prices, it is unlikely that the economy will keep going on because there has been no structural change.

I believe that it is time for me – which is what I’m doing – to challenge Vladimir Putin to a fight, because it’s time for him to explain what political trajectory he wants Russia to follow, where he would like to steer Russia. I think it’s time for an open debate, an open argument because I believe that unless this is addressed and unless things start changing we will eventually pass the point of no return, where there will not be any democracy left in Russia and where the authoritarian regime will become solidified and will become an absolute.

I believe that the biggest mistakes the democrats have made in these recent years is that they have succumbed to the “charm of power,” much the same way that the West has done too. And I think that over the last few years they have effectively replaced a dialogue with the people with a dialogue with the incumbent.

I think that there is a silver lining to this cloud and the devastating defeat, and what the democrats have suffered may very well be the best thing that has happened to them in the last few years because now they may be able to admit to their mistakes, to repent, to use it as a cathartic experience and set about building a strong liberal party, one that will be able to very well, at the 2007 - 2008 election cycle, oppose the authorities effectively in 2007 and 2008 and emerge as a major force. However, I think that the foundation for that needs to be laid down now.

And that is exactly what has prompted me to become an independent presidential candidate, to formulate my own position, to voice my own position. And as I’m entering the race, I did not think of it as a short-term opportunity to convey my messages to the voters but rather as the beginning of a long-term strategic effort whose overriding goal is to make sure that Russia will stay on the democratic path and will keep moving towards democracy rather than in the opposite direction.

And people have been sympathetic to this message. They have come through and shown their support of this message, because despite massive amounts of negative and controversial information coming from every angle, such as that I have sold my soul to the Kremlin or that I have connections with some extremist human rights organizations and there have been calls for boycotting the elections, and despite all of this ballyhoo, it turns out that the developments of the last two weeks prove very convincingly that the public wants to hear the voice of opposition, it wants to have a fair and democratic election, and it wants to be able to vote – to have the choice of voting for an opposition candidate, and these recent developments are that over just two weeks I have been able to collect 4 million signatures, which is twice the qualifying number that a candidate needs to run for president, and this number also compares very favorably, for instance, to the 3 million votes that the entire SPS gathered at the latest parliamentary elections.

So, although I started out my remarks in a somewhat pessimistic tone, I would like to finish on an optimistic note. I do not think that Russia is lost for liberal ideas; I don’t think that Russia is lost as far as democracy is concerned. All we have to do is to stop being afraid and to start speaking the truth.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. ÅSLUND: Thank you very much, indeed. I would like to take the privilege to ask the first question, which is the obvious question here in Washington: What can the U.S. do today for democracy in the presidential elections on the 14th of March?

MS. KHAKAMADA: I think that what the West, and the U.S. in particular, could do is to, while focusing of course on the usual suspects such as the strategic partnership as part of the U.S.-Russia relationship and the mutual economic interests and economic cooperation, to also try and get an answer to the question of which political course Russia is being steered towards. To me, signs such as pressure on political competition are truly bad signs because they indicate, if anything, that there is no balance of power in the political system that currently is Russia.

MR. ÅSLUND: Thank you.

Questions from the floor? My first person here is Robert Kaiser from The Washington Post.

Q: Thank you, Anders.

Welcome. I’d like to ask about another form of Western involvement, which is economic. Some worry that Western investors, American investors are in effect now supporting an authoritarian regime in Moscow the way they did in the ‘20s and ‘30s. How do you see the role of that investment in this period of Russian history?

MS. KHAKAMADA: I have just attended the Davos forum, which was also attended by some very large investors, including from the United States. I would describe the mood of Western investors as ambivalent. On the one hand, they are concerned about political risks. But on the other hand sometimes it is more convenient to deal with an authoritarian regime because once an authoritarian regime offers guarantees, those guarantees are pretty much set in stone.

So when I set down with Chubais in Moscow and asked him what he thought about – what the West thought about developments in Russia, he said, I think that the West is quite happy because they all understand very well what is going on here and they seem to be pleased with it.

I actually think that the situation is similar to that in Russia. I cannot really describe the Russian business community as voting for democracy these days. Many people in the business community naively think that they are not going to be negatively effected by developments in Russia as long as they have their man secure in the FSB – in the security agencies covering them and their interests.

Q: (Through translator.) Of course you’re running as an independent, but could you sum up for us what’s happening among the right-wing parties and movements in Russia such as the Union of Right-Wing Forces and Yabloko – what is happening there now; which way are they going, and do you think that they may emerge as a major force at the next election cycle?

MR. ÅSLUND: If I may add here, your party, the Union of Rightist Forces, had a congress –

MS. KHAKAMADA: Yes.

MR. ASLUND: -- on Saturday, and they elected you as the fourth person into the political council. What did they say about your presidential candidacy?

MS. KHAKAMADA: At the latest congress of the SPS, 62 delegates supported my candidacy and 75 spoke in favor of, “free vote,” at the presidential elections, so the bottom line is that it will be a nonpartisan vote. And I think that this breakdown of votes demonstrates very clearly why it is that the SPS has lost the latest election and why it’s not going to win any future elections.

The Union of Right Forces must make up its mind and decide whether they’re with Putin or perhaps they’re with the people. And yes, the people, Putin does appeal to a very large proportion of the Russian people, but there is also another sizeable proportion of the Russian people, my estimate would be 15 percent or so, who are not happy about delegating their life choices to an authority, to a czar, and who would like to make up their minds for themselves. So the SPS needs to choose between these 85 on the one hand and 15 on the other.

I don’t think I’m really qualified to talk about Yabloko, but my impression is that as long as they remain unable to compromise and make alliances or come together behind particular messages, I think they are also doomed to a political death, and I’m referring primarily to Grigory Yavlinsky.

So I believe that if by the year 2007 we do not have a new party that hopefully will incorporate the best and the precious forces from both SPS and Yabloko and will bring in completely new individuals who will be new on the scene -- unless we have a party like that by the year 2007, I do not think that there will be any serious competition to either President Putin, should he be running for a third term, or for someone who will be his appointed successor.

MR. ÅSLUND: Yes, you over there. And please introduce by name and institution.

Q: (Through translator.) I have a question regarding this particular trip to Washington. If you could tell us briefly what the agenda of this trip is and what you’re hoping to take away when you go back to Russia. And as an extension of that question, what kind of prospects do you think the U.S.-Russia relationship has, especially against the background of the latest statement made by Mr. Powell in Moscow?

MS. KHAKAMADA: I’m here by the invitation of Congressmen Cox, who is behind a recently established Russian democracy caucus in the Congress – has been around since last October -- and I’m very happy that there is such an entity now in the U.S. Congress. And I’m here to try and help the U.S. establishment to understand Russia somewhat better. I’m here to tell them an unbiased, objective view of Russia because I believe that, specifically for the purposes of the future relationship between our two countries, that is exactly what the U.S. establishment needs; it needs to have a better understanding of Russia.

As far as the actual agenda, I’m meeting with very influential congressmen and senators, both Republicans and Democrats. I’ve had a meeting at the Department of State. I’ve had an impromptu informal meeting with Condoleezza Rice. The goal that I’m pursuing in all of these meetings and negotiations is to try and explain my position, which is that if the U.S. – for the benefit of the strategic cooperation between Russia and the United States, while being pragmatic and why focusing of course on economic interests, we also need to make sure that there is clarity as far as what political regime is being built in Russia and what political path is being pursued by Russia. And rather than just having a regime that the Americans can do business with and deal with immediate tasks and objectives with, America would benefit greatly from a truly democratic political regime in Russia, one that it can discourse openly with, just as it does with other Western mature democracies.

Q: (Through translator.) I have two quick questions. One is that if the big Russian business is following instructions from the Kremlin, how are you going to fund your election campaign? And the other question is, you have said that you’re challenging Mr. Putin to a fight; what are you going to do if he simply ignores the challenge?

MS. KHAKAMADA: What we have discussed is what the attitude of big business is towards emerging authoritarianism in Russia. And I said that at least partially, this attitude is positive because it may just be more convenient and easier to do business with an authoritarian regime, just like it is in China.

And to answer your question more specifically; that is, what specific companies can fund my campaign, I will be more than happy, but not now; rather when Mr. Putin has disclosed -- has published a list of his donors.

And to answer your second question, this is what I call challenging someone to a fight. You don’t really have to have someone in the same room with you to fight that person. It’s sufficient to ask and answer questions like that as long as you print them in your magazine. That already will amount to a fight.

Q: (Off mike.)

MS. KHAKAMADA: I understand that you would like to hear an answer but I would like to first -- (audio break) -- because the earlier version of Itogi, the one that was published before, that question was published, was printed there. I’m not sure about now.

Q: I have two questions. One is when you published – almost two weeks ago you published an open letter to President Putin asking him to reveal the truth behind the Dubrovka Theatre crisis. How did you expect the television media to cover that? Were you surprised at how little it was covered? Did you expect it to at least get negative coverage?

MS. KHAKAMADA: I was quite sure that the issue was going to be hushed up. By the way, a lady named Tatyana Karpova, a mother who lost her child at the hostage crisis at Dubrovka, has set up an organization that comprises former hostages who are fighting to find out the truth about what happened there and who are part of an official government investigation of that incident.

And this organization has appealed to all the presidential candidates, asking them to use their political weight to try and find out what happened at Dubrovka and why there were so many casualties, 129, and deliver coverage in that regard from the press -- of course, completely ignored the fact that our open letter was a response to a request from that organization. The organization, as I said, is trying to establish the truth about the developments at Dubrovka, and in particular they’re concerned that on February 24th the case will be closed officially, and they have tried to contact the media. They have called press conferences but they’ve pretty much run into a wall of silence. They’re just being blanket boycotted.

Q: (Through translator.) I’m a long-time supporter and admirer of yours, and there is much more to you than meets the eye, which is of course is a charming and highly intelligent woman. I understand that to get where you are you worked very, very hard -- it wasn’t just a lucky streak. I also understand that to do what you’re doing now, to run for president in Russia, requires more than just political grit; it requires physical courage.

And as I’ve been listening to you today, the best piece news I’ve heard refers to the 4 million signatures that you have been able to collect in two weeks, which of course exceeds anybody’s wildest expectations. As someone who has surrendered a while ago and who is now cowardly rejoicing that her children have U.S. passports, and on behalf of many thousands like me, thousands that are multiplying in the U.S. for the obvious reasons, I would like to ask you, what is it exactly, other than the 4 million signatures, that you’re basing your optimism on, in the sense that Russia is not lost for democracy completely?

MS. KHAKAMADA: Well, I really see myself as a bottle-opener, if you will, and bottled inside that bottle there’s a lot of good things such as young people, market forces, a lot of healthy energy, and they’re kept within that bottle by a pretty solid, thick cork, which is constituted by various situations of authoritarian authority such as the security services, police, traffic police, the people who check your passports as you leave the country, bureaucrats of all ranks and of all caliber. And I believe that -- and actually my experience has already demonstrated that all it takes really is to remove that cork out of the bottle, to let the genie out, and before you know, people will start asking themselves what is it exactly that we have been afraid of so much? And then, again, before you know, a reporter will ask himself or herself, why shouldn’t I write something about this and that, and maybe you will actually print the question that she has just asked in this audience and that will be another brick less in the wall.

And it’s not that I was anxious to act as a bottle-opener. Actually I sat around and waited for a while and then I realized that all people were concerned about was how to make some kind of a deal with the Kremlin, and that’s what everybody was doing, and I was waiting for perhaps a person of the other gender to come along with perhaps a stronger voice, physically, and a different kind of charisma, and to start shaking that bottle, but it never happened, so I decided to do it myself. And the optimism that I’ve expressed is based on the fact that I think there’s a great deal of healthy stuff in that bottle; all it takes is just to take out the cork.

MR. ÅSLUND: Thank you. I have three last questions that I think that they work together.

Q: (Through translator.) My name is Svetlana Klimenko and I work here at the World Bank in Washington. And you’ve mentioned as one of your key intentions as you enter the presidential race is to challenge Mr. Putin to a dialogue. However, I also do not rule out the fact that, who knows, maybe you will be our new president several months down the road. So perhaps, while this of course is the key objective, other outcomes are also possible.

I would like to ask you a perhaps naïve question. After spending about 10 years in the Duma, what could you describe as your biggest single accomplishment that made a difference in the lives of the ordinary Russians – something that I can tell my family in Siberia when I call them on the phone.

Q: (Off mike.)

MS. KHAKAMADA: (In English.) I did not answer; excuse me.

Q: (Off mike.)

MS. KHAKAMADA: I guess when you call them next time you can tell them that we’ve spent the last 10 years trying to reverse the deception that the Bolsheviks perpetrated back in 1917 when they came to power. And of course Lenin famously promised the factories for the workers and land for the farmers, which of course never happened. We spent the entire decade in the ‘90s reversing that fraud and trying, and eventually accomplishing -- perhaps with mistakes, perhaps with detours -- the task of returning property to the people, of creating the institution of private property once again in Russia, something that had been gone for the better part of the 20th century. And private property is key to freedom because it is a symbol of an individual’s freedom from the authority and a freedom that is upheld in a court of law.

MR. ÅSLUND: Last question – (inaudible).

Q: (Asks question first in Russian.) I wanted to ask Ms. Khakamada about what the reaction was to her speech from her American official interlocutors, and whether their support might be a kiss of death for her as a Russian politician, and how she sees the Russian attitude toward the U.S. at this point.

TRANSLATOR: He also asked if the approval of the Americans can actually damage her reputation at home.

MS. KHAKAMADA: I’m as much of a presidential candidate as Vladimir Putin is. I don’t think that my contacts with the American establishment are going to hurt me in any way because I don’t think that the footage of Mr. Putin that the Russians have seen on TV in his shirtsleeves over dinner with his European counterparts has hurt him in any way. If anything, I think he owes part of his domestic popularity to that kind of behavior. And I believe that if and when Russians see me or find out about me contacting and spending time with the American establishment, they may very well think that, yes, they are looking at their future president who even in that regard is no worse than their current president.

The U.S. establishment of course is very interested in a strategic cooperation in Russia, and while it may be content with the current status of the U.S.-Russia relationship, it certainly has its own concerns, such as the outcome of the latest parliamentary elections and lack of clarity vis-à-vis the political course that Russia is embarking on.

And of course the U.S. establishment would like to see that this political course is actually one of a democratic nature; that Russia is going to stay on the democratic path it has elected to go on. And I think that the most recent statements made by, of all people, Colin Powell in Moscow is a landmark statement in many ways because Mr. Powell is a member of the Presidential administration which hasn’t really talked much about democracy, as far as Russia is concerned. It has focused on Iraq, has focused on the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, has focused on the WTO membership. And the fact that after several years of not discussing democracy Mr. Powell makes this particular statement in Moscow indicates that the U.S. is perhaps taking on a different tone in its thinking about what’s happening in Russia. And of course Russia is fully entitled to being a member of the club of industrialized nations, but to be a full-fledged member it needs not only to do what it takes as far as the economy; it also needs to make sure that politically it is a democracy.

Thank you very much.

MR. ÅSLUND: Thank you very much, Irina, and personally I wish you all the best, and I admire your courage.

(Applause.)

(END)