vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #162 / Special reports / Reading article...

Three of Vladivostok’s five city districts again failed to gain autonomy from Mayor Victor Cherepkov in March 1 elections.

More than 70 percent of voters in the Leninsky, Pervomaisky, and Frunzensky regions cast their ballots against all district leader and duma candidates, according to early polling results released by the City Electoral Commission.

The vote marked the fourth time in two years that district leaders failed to convince the public that Vladivostok should be split into municipal zones independent of the mayor. Each district planned to have its own duma and leader, and would have collected its own taxes and formed an individual budget as well.

The city’s First River and Sovietsky districts did not hold votes. There wasn’t enough money in the Sovietsky region, and the First River region did not want autonomy from the mayor, according to administration officials in both regions.

The groundwork was laid for the vote when the Krai Duma, under pressure from the krai administration, passed a law last year declaring that independent municipal zones were legal under the Russian constitution, said Krai Duma deputy Vladimir Ksenzuk.

Though the 15 percent voter turnout was higher than the City Electoral Commission expected, the mood on election day was unenthusiastic — particularly among younger voters. “If anything depended on it, I would have voted,” said 18-year-old student Dmitry Kabalin, who laughed at the suggestion that he vote.

Another man, Nikolai Ostakhov, walked past his polling station into an electronics shop. He then left the shop, not stopping to vote. “It just won’t change anything at all,” he said. “There’s no point in voting.”

Voters who did cast ballots were mostly pensioners, said Olga Skokul, head of the Frunzensky District’s Number Four polling station. “This doesn’t compare with presidential elections of course, but even so, we’ve had very few young people come in,” she said.

According to pensioner Nadia Logina, voting was a matter of saving her 350,000 ruble per month retirement income.

“My pension is so small,” she said. “Every new district deputy would have his own car and his own secretary. That means that expenditures on us would be less.”

Though elections went smoothly, a scuffle broke out in Frunzensky District when vote counters locked doors to the district administration building, preventing Duma Deputy Vladimir Gilgenberg from observing the process.

The mayor’s press center accused the Frunzensky district of “a number of infractions” in a press release, and filed a complaint to both city and krai prosecutors.