vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #156 / Special reports / Reading article...

Voters in Primorye, frustrated by political squabbles and economic troubles, said “no” to a second term for most regional lawmakers, choosing businessmen to represent them instead.

An unexpectedly high 36 percent of voters braved subzero temperatures on Dec. 7 to vote against deputies running for a second term in the Duma. Only four of 14 candidates who sought to stay in office were re-elected to the 39-seat body.

“The previous Duma showed great disrespect to voters by its actions, and residents here wanted to say so,” said Sergei Knyazev, head of the krai election commission.

Election officials said Dec. 8 the results showed the public’s intolerance for politicians who they see as more concerned with lining their own pockets than serving their constituents.

Knyazev said the election’s turnout was extremely high compared to the previous Duma election. “Candidates themselves became more active, and mass media played a positive role this time,” he said.

He believes the results will be recognized valid despite numerous complaints from the candidates who lost. “I don’t think there were serious infringements of the law. People [complain] just for the sake of advertising themselves,” he said.

Of the three blocks of candidates participating in the campaign – businessmen, pro-governor, and anti-governor – businessmen took 18 seats. Some of them represent the major military enterprises like Zvezda in Bolshoi Kamen and Progress in Arseniev.

The pro-governor block secured seats in the new Duma with vice governor Vladimir Ignatenko, former representative of Russia president in Primorye, and General Victor Rozov, who retired from the army in disagreement over Russian-Chinese border demarcation agreements.

About twenty of the new Duma members support the governor, but not all have direct ties to him, analysts say.

On the flip side, pro-mayor deputies in the new Duma comprise 10 people. Those with direct ties to the mayor include the pro-mayor newspaper Editors-in-chief Leonid Beltyukov and Vladimir Gilgenberg. Vladimir Ksendzuk, head of the mayor’s Finance Department, was elected as well, but must now resign from his city post to serve on the Duma.

Anti-governor businessman Sergei Solovyov, the former head of the krai council (now the Krai Duma) received almost unanimous support in Vladivostok’s Pervorechensky district.

Businessman Alexander Kasatkin, 48, said he has known Soloviov for 15 years. “He is independent, all the rest will be fighting for their departmental interests,” he said.

Communists won four seats, and candidates from other national parties didn’t capture any spots at all.

Elections for Vladivostok district heads and deputies to district councils occurred jointly with krai Duma elections, but most voters literally cast their ballots against all candidates. Knyazev said the elections were held at district election committees’ initiative, not the krai committee’s.

The media barely noticed the elections, and many local residents didn’t even know they would be voting on the district issue. Only the mayor’s office publicly spoke against dividing Vladivostok into districts, despite the krai court’s decision that they are legal, and locals must elect leaders to run them.

Vladimir Korobov, a 24 year old military man said: “It is not because of Cherepkov’s anti-propaganda or the fact that we learned about it at the last minute, but just because dividing the city into districts does not make sense.”