Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

294 Cameron Ross80 per cent of the seats in local councils and 75 per cent of the contests forthe posts of heads of municipalities. In second place, far behind, was theLiberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) which took part in just 2.5 percent of the elections, and in third place were members of the CPRF with anegligible number of candidates. United Russia swept the board winning 76per cent of the council seats and 62 per cent of the posts of heads of municipalities.32 In Volgograd Region, United Russia nominated 2,000 candidatesfor local council elections, whilst the Communists, the mainopposition party in the region, could only muster 359, the LDPR 112,Rodina 184 and the Agrarian Party of Russia 144. However, 60 per centof the electorate who turned out to vote gave their support to parties ofthe left (Communists, Agrarians, Rodina) in this traditional stronghold ofleftist parties. 33However, many parties declared that their actual electoral support wasmuch higher than the above official data would suggest. Many of the socalled‘independent candidates’, it is claimed, were in fact party members.Thus, for example, in Arkhangel'sk Oblast according to the official data,only three parties took part in the elections (UR, CPRF and LDPR), whichwere held on 2 October 2005 and less than 1 per cent of the total number ofcandidates were nominated by parties. 34 However, United Russia laterdeclared that of the 1,035 candidates for local councils, 806 were partymembers, and of the 153 candidates for heads of municipalities, 122 supportedthe ‘party of power’. For the Communists the figures were thirtydeputies and five heads of municipalities; for Motherland fourteen and eightrespectively, LDPR (seven deputies). 35In Tatarstan, opposition candidates were threatened with ‘criminal investigationsand other forms of harassment’ if they did not withdraw theirnames from the ballots. 36 This may explain the fact that 97 per cent of candidates(approximately 5,000) came from United Russia and its close ally‘Tatarstan – a New Century’, whilst the number from the opposition numberedonly 300 (3 per cent). 37 These two ‘parties of power’ won over 70 percent of the votes. The remaining parties, including the CPRF, LDPR andSPS, together received less than 1 per cent. Candidates from the democraticopposition, supported by the public associations ‘Equality and Legality’ and‘Our City’, failed to win a single seat. Moreover, all but one of the districtheads, who had previously been appointed by the Republican President, wonre-election. 38Party representation was, as we would expect, much higher in those veryfew municipalities which used a mixed electoral system. Thus, for example,in elections for Tomsk City Okrug Council, eleven parties participated in theelections and six of these are represented in the new assembly. 39 In TulaRegion United Russia won 79 of the 211 seats in the local council elections.The CPRF was second with 44 seats, followed by Rodina with 39 and theLDPR with 9. The Russian People’s Party won a total of 18, the AgrarianParty of Russia 11, and the Union of Right Forces 8.