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It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad — or so true. Residents feel helpless to effect change. The recent postponement of City Duma elections is a further blow to citizens’ rights to choose a better future for themselves. That Vladivostok has been without a city government for five years indicates a lack of commitment to democracy by local leaders. City and regional officials have seized on City Duma elections as a sparring point and the courts as their battlefield, tying up the election process with a string of legal disputes. What a shame that the courts, an instrument of justice, are being used to deny residents the right to vote. “All politics are local,” a famous U.S. congressman once observed. The physical and psychological distance between the political scene in Moscow and Primorye certainly has something to do with the crisis situation here. But it seems that city leaders heap blame on the krai, and the krai heaps blame on the federal government, in order to avoid facing the real issues of local administration. Residents need to pressure local leaders up front, demand accountability, confront them with their complaints and criticism, and not expect salvation, or handouts, from Moscow. Dark days in Vladivostok, indeed.
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