WP: For Liberal Parties, a Win of Sorts in Moscow

For Liberal Parties, a Win of Sorts in Moscow
Alliance With No Presence in National Legislature Takes Three Seats in City Parliament

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 6, 2005; Page A30


MOSCOW, Dec. 5 -- Russia's moribund Western-oriented liberal movement registered the political equivalent of a pulse in Sunday's elections for the Moscow city parliament, in a vote swept by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party as predicted.

With only the scale of United Russia's victory in doubt, attention here had focused on whether the liberal Yabloko party, in alliance with other small parties, could cross the threshold of 10 percent of the vote to guarantee itself seats in parliament and create a modicum of optimism for national parliamentary elections in 2007.

Both Yabloko and its major ally, the Union of Right Forces, failed to get into the national parliament in 2003 elections. In the run-up to Sunday's vote, political analysts here had predicted the death of this strand of the Russian opposition if it failed to win seats in the city parliament.

The Union of Right Forces, setting aside past differences with Yabloko, subsumed itself under the Yabloko banner along with some other small political groupings. Some figures in the liberal movement would like to see this alliance go forward to the next national elections.

Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, speaking on Echo Moskvy radio Monday, called the election an "important event" but criticized what he called "unequal and unfair treatment," citing United Russia's dominance of broadcast media coverage. His party also has charged that United Russia is able to pressure public employees to vote for it....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120502084.html