Itogi, No. 15.

KREMLIN RETURNS TO ONCE-MALFUNCTIONED IDEA OF BIPARTISANSHIP TO PUT AN END TO POLITICAL TURMOIL

By Dmitry PINSKER

According to a Kremlin insider, the presidential administration wants "to have a stable party system comprising two full-fledged political organisations - one right- and the other left-of-centre - to dominate parliament." This shows that the President-elect's team is sure that sound power can only rest on two pillars. Inasmuch as two such parties have not come into being in the years of democratic transformation, Vladimir Putin's administration regards it as its duty to create them.

The present re-designers of the political framework claim that they have taken into consideration the mistakes of their predecessors and even revealed the most serious of their mistakes. To listen to them, the problem was that our society was much polarized five years ago and the then President settled on one of the poles, instead of balancing in-between them. Today the situation is different: even Putin's main rival, Gennady Zyuganov, is inclined to constructive cooperation with the Kremlin, and the feeling is mutual.

According to the President's advisers, the two system-forming parties (Conservative and Social Democratic) are to be the unquestionable favourites of the parliamentary election race in 2003. All this is at the stage of the blueprints as of now, because the Kremlin think-tank has only outlined the task in principle. Nonetheless, the fundamental idea is crystal clear.

The conservative party is to be created on the basis of Unity with the participation of what is left of Our Home Is Russia, or NDR, and the "healthy" wing of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS. In the Kremlin's interpretation "the healthy" are those who are pained to see the SPS rolling down into opposition. When the question of the leader of the new party comes up, Kremlin insiders name Sergei Kiriyenko.

It must be said that all these plans and ideas cause surprise and even irritation in the SPS. At the Union's congress scheduled for May Kiriyenko and Anatoly Chubais are going to initiate the transformation of this election bloc into a full-fledged political party. SPS leaders have long since been talking of the need to create a political construction which would be no less effective than the KPRF - a smoothly operating machinery for conducting election campaigns at any level - from mayoral to presidential.

With the elections over, the threat of a split among the right forces has not been eliminated, because a considerable part of SPS members - mostly veterans of the democratic movement - are displeased with the actions of the SPS leadership in support of Putin.

By and large, the Kremlin looks forward to such a split on the right flank of the political spectrum. Presidential advisers predict that there will be no trace left of the election democratic coalition in a short while and Kiriyenko's only choice will be to join the pro-Putin conservative party.

A social democratic party should emerge as a result of the self-transformation of the KPRF, according to one version. Putin described such an option in his book "In the First Person": "Communists will either change their program precepts, thereby becoming a large left party of a European type, or, if they are unable to do this, will lose their social base and will gradually leave the political scene. Their leaders understand this. I think they are getting ready for self-transformation. They are unable to do this today, fearing that their electorate will regard it as treachery. However, it is important not to miss the chance - when, to which degree and how much they will have to change about themselves." I do not think that Putin had a clear idea of the social base of the left forces, its strata and classes. Our domestic political spin doctors rarely think of such things, in general. This is true of not only the upper echelons: when the issue at hand is the construction of a party beginning wi

th the "roof", who would fritter away their energy on such trifles as supports? In the meantime, it is rather difficult even for communists to give a collective portrait of their average voters.

Some Kremlin thinkers have added to their armoury one of the things Putin said the night of his election triumph. He expressed his intention to win over KPRF's followers to his side, instead of waiting till the social base of that party shrinks the natural way. "The policy of authorities should always be more balanced. Then they will not have to fight with communists as a party but will have to fight for people," the President-elect said.

The proponents of this more sophisticated tactics offer to create a social democratic party by breaking the social democratic wing away from the KPRF and uniting it with other more moderate left forces, such as the Agrarian Party. A union with the Federation of Independent Trade Unions will allow the new left to acquire a powerful regional construction, and the new organisation is to be headed by Aman Tuleyev.

By and large, it really does not matter much which of the two options for the creation of a social democratic party on the basis of the KPRF will be found more promising and which will be rejected. There is the ground to predict that both will prove to be a failure.

The Kremlin is ready to reconcile itself to the new abortive attempt of the KPRF's self-reformation. Its agreement to play the role of a "system opposition" is enough for the presidential administration. With Boris Yeltsin gone, Kremlin insiders are no longer ashamed of their close relations with the KPRF. This was publicly demonstrated last January, when Gennady Seleznev was elected State Duma Speaker thanks to the united efforts of the new allies. It is interesting that communists received that precious gift actually for nothing: they only promised not to do what they would be unable to do anyway - to prevent Putin from becoming President.

A pro-Putin non-communist majority could be formed after the December parliamentary elections. But that seemed to be too much of a trouble, because in that case, it would be necessary to depend on some "inconvenient" factions - "capricious" Yabloko and principled SPS, the leaders of which would criticise government and presidential initiatives all the time. Today, after a year of political battles, the Kremlin wants quietness, silence, peace of mind and even some kind of stagnation. For this it should be able to rely on parties with a nearly army discipline.

The idea of bipartisanship mostly attracts the Kremlin insiders because there will be no more turbulent parliamentary debates which led to political crises, there will be no need to guess the outcome of each voting and it will be able to forget as a bad dream many-day-long consultations with nearly each and every deputy. All questions could be decided well in advance in quiet Kremlin offices. This is how the problems arising in connection with gubernatorial elections are already being decided and how things were settled in the first days of the work of the new Duma. If it had not been for the protest of the offended right, the scenario under which Seleznev has been elected Speaker could have been regarded as a foolproof option.

The problem is that such a mechanism is unreliable. The moving union with communists will inevitably break down the moment the government demands that parliament adopt the bills aimed to facilitate the fulfilment of a program of radical economic reforms, which German Gref's Center for Strategic Research is preparing. Putin says that these bills will be submitted for consideration by the Duma before it recesses for summer vacation.

The building of at least one, conservative, pillar seems to be rather improbable. Any attempts to revive the mechanical robot - Unity - will inevitably lead to a split of that movement into several groups and their members being drawn by different lobbying groupings to their side. This will be an end to either a common ideology or a formal party discipline.