12/09/2013
On September 8 local elections were held in most of the cities and regions of Russia (not all). It was the first time since 2003, when it was decided that the person appointing mayors and governors would be the President of the Russian Federation. Now Russia returns to the previous system of popular elections. As the upper House of the Russian Parliament, the Federation Council is composed by the representatives of the constituent subjects of the Federation (regions, republics plus Moscow and St. Petersburg, the two cities with special constitutional status), it could be said that the Council has also been democratised, as it will be the presidents of the Republics, the governors of the Regions and the mayors of the aforementioned two cities, the ones who will appoint the members of the upper House and not the President by proxy.
That's the theory. The low voter turnout, however, suggests that Russian citizens have no confidence in the materiality of the change, although we should add that after seventy years of compulsory and oppressive political mobilisation and participation, the preferred form of social expression in Russia is staying outside of politics as much as possible, so that, in general, turnout rates are lower than in Europe. In Moscow, the largest and most populous city in Europe by far (if it were a state it would be the seventh in Europe in population), only 26% of the electorate voted, when in 2003 57% voted. The candidate of the party in power won, the current mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, with 51% of votes. The surprise candidate, of a vaguely liberal ideology but actually indefinable, Aleksei Navalny, was the second most voted with 27%. The crash corresponded to Ivan Melnikov, the deputy secretary of the Communist Party, who only received 10% of the votes, far away from the force that the Communist Party is supposed to have and actually has.