16 Feb 2012 | Russia
Ekho Moskvy is Russia’s most popular talk radio station, with 900,000 listeners daily. Since its creation in 1990 it has delivered information as an independent media which, unlike Russian TV, isn’t subject to censorship. This remained the case even after state-owned Gazprom’s holding — Gazprom-Media — bought out 66 per cent shares of Ekho Moskvy in the early 2000s and later, when Gazprom-Media fell under control of big bank “Russia” board of directors chair Yuri Kovalchuk, considered a close friend of Vladimir Putin.
But this week many observers have expressed concerns over Ekho’s ability to continue to remain independent, after Gazprom-Media demanded pre-term resignation and re-election of the station’s board of directors.
Two independent directors — Evgeny Yasin, research director of National Research University Higher School of Economics, and Alexander Makovsky, deputy head of Public Law Research Centre Council – have been forced to step down from their positions on the board, and the station’s editor-in-chief Alexey Venediktov and his deputy Vladimir Varfolomeev — two of three Echo’s representatives in the board — have stepped down voluntarily.
Gazprom Media used to appoint four of nine board of directors members, three were from the station, whilst the other two were independent. Now Gazprom Media will appoint five members, and Ekho Moskvy will only have two representatives, which, according to Venediktov, will “make it easier for Gazprom Media to replace the editor in chief”. The two new independent directors recommended by Gazprom Media are both close to president Dmitry Medvedev.
Ekho Moskvy journalists own 34 per cent of the station’s share. For 10 years they have struggled to buy out the other shares from Gazprom Media, but they have been unsuccessful. Staff have expressed concerns over the demands from Gazprom Media.
In an official statement, the journalists explained that they understood the need to respond to officials who are critics of the station, but added that the hasty advancement of the board of directors meeting needed to be explained.
Ekho Moskvy has been criticised by Putin for its in-depth coverage of events including the Moscow theatre and Beslan school hostage crises and the 2008 South Ossetia war. Last month Putin said the station’s journalists “poured diarrhoea” on him “day and night”.
Alexey Venediktov and Gazprom Media representatives claim the resignations from the board of directors will not affect Ekho Moskvy editorial policy and won’t lead to Venediktov’s removal. They explained he will keep his post for two more years and can then be re-elected in accordance with the station’s charter.
The new Echo representative on the board, the station’s directorYuri Fedutinov said the journalists have never faced any pressure from Gazprom Media.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied allegations of Putin involvement in the change, saying the pre-term board of directors resignation relates to “Gazprom Media corporate agenda”.
But Evgeny Yasin and Alexander Makovsky both say Gazprom Media’s move is to “influence editorial’s policy”.
Yasin told journalists: “This is done to establish government control over independent media to avoid any problems the authorities might have.”
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has called Gazprom Media’s demand “a slap in the face of public opinion”.
In an interview for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Russian service, he added: “To act that way with an independent, democratic radio station, which is loved and appreciated and to which people listen and [whose] material they read on the Internet is such ignorance.”
On his blog, Yabloko opposition party founder and unregistered presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky called the incident “direct pressure on media”, which may indicate the government’s policy on free media after presidential elections. But the more pressure the authorities apply, the more obvious the shortage of freedom will be, he added, stating that repressions won’t stop the protest movement which arose after allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections in Russia.
Another two incidents marked the scandal over Gazprom Media and Ekho Moskvy. On 15 February, the day after the scandal began, the Prosecutor’s office in Presnensky’s Moscow district called Alexey Venediktov. Prosecutors referred to an appeal which was filed by a citizen who claimed that the Ekho Moskvy’s charter didn’t correspond to Russia’s Labour Code. The applicant turned out to be from Yabloko party, he expressed concern over Echo’s journalists being forbidden to enter political parties. Yabloko’s superior members promised to exclude the complainant from the party and called his complaint “a provocation”.
In another incident, Ekho Moskvy journalist Alexander Pluschev’s had his blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts hacked. The journalist considers this a response to his post about pro-Putin youth movement “Nashi” where he described how they insulted him and allegedly damaged his car.
4 Feb 2012 | Russia
One month ahead of presidential polls, tens of thousands of people marched through the centre of Moscow today to protest Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s expected return to the Kremlin for a third presidential term.
The stop-Putin movement staged its third major rally since disputed 4 December parliamentary polls. Protesters rallied together and accepted a set of demands read aloud by organisers during the rally. Opposition leaders demanded new parliamentary elections, the release of political prisoners, the dismissal of the head of the Central Election Committee, as well as the registration of Grigory Yavlinsky as a presidential candidate. Yavlinksy, the founder of the Yabloko opposition party, was recently refused registration in the race by the Central Election Committee.
Despite the freezing temperatures turnout was higher than expected. Organisers estimated 120,000 attended, but police put that number at 36,000. The march and rally from Kaluzhskaya to Bolotnaya Square today was the largest protest to date, organisers vowed to hold another demonstration on 26 February if the Kremlin fails to meet their demands.
Today’s protest brought together the diverse elements of the ant-government movement, four big columns were formed by protesters representing the leftists, liberals, nationalists and civil activists. Smaller columns were formed to represent smaller groups, including religious and sexual minority groups. Protesters seeking peaceful change held white balloons to signify unity. Bright and creative posters were held up during the protest, with messages like “Russia without Putin,” “Putin you’re fired,” “Put in out” and “We’re ruled by vegetables.”
Putin’s supporters have dismissed the historically large rallies, claiming that participants are “financed by the West to destabilise the situation in Russia.” Vladimir Markin, member of Putin’s United People’s Front and spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee dismissed video evidence of fraud during the 4 December election, claiming that it was falsified, financed, and spread by the United States.
Anti-Putin rallies spread outside of the capital city, with similar rallies held across Russia and even in cities in 17 other countries, including London, Madrid, Sydney, and New York. Smaller anti-Putin rallies were held by individuals who felt that they could not march under the same banner as communists and nationalists.
A parallel rally in support of Putin was held at Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, it attempted to link the loose stop-Putin coalition to the anti-government Orange Revolution that took place in Ukraine seven years ago, attendees were warned of an “orange threat from USA.” There have been allegations that participation in the rally was not voluntary, claims that many participants were employees of government-funded institutions, such as post offices and city councils, and that they were told that they would lose their jobs if they did not take part. Police estimated 138,000 participants, eyewitnesses put the figure much lower.
Putin speaking at a press conference in the Ural Mountains region said that the number of Muscovites who turned out in support was a reflection of his popularity not just the product of “administrative resources“. Although he did acknowledge that such resources may have been used to mobilise his supporters.
Meanwhile bloggers, rights activists, opposition members and journalists are gearing up to monitor the upcoming presidential elections as fears of vote-rigging rise.
30 Jan 2012 | Russia
The Russian Central Election Committee has refused to register Grigory Yavlinsky — founder of the Yabloko opposition party — as a presidential candidate. Yabloko did not reach the seven per cent minimum in the State Duma elections, but according to electoral law, the party should still have been able to register Yavlinksy as a presidential candidate with two million signatures in support. The committee rejected 25 per cent of the signatures he collected, deeming them to be defective.
Yavlinsky said that according to the committee’s documentation, less than three per cent of signatures were fraudulent, while the other 23 per cent contained “other infringements of paper execution.” The law says the number of defective signatures must not exceed five per cent.
The party denies the allegations, and continue to insist that the majority of signatures were authentic. Many well-respected artists and public figures signed in support of Yavlinsky, including former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev.
“The committee’s decision is politically motivated,” Yavlinsky told journalists, expressing concern that authorities are compromising voters’ right to choose a candidate. “Clearly this is not a decision celebrating the rule of law and allowing citizens to influence the election process,” he concluded.
A number of Russian opposition politicians said that refusal to register Yavlinsky could delegitimise the upcoming elections. The organisers of the 4 February “rally for fair elections” condemned the Committee’s decision.
Russian Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency it is “absurd to protest against the Central Election Committee’s decision.”
Yabloko’s watchdogs are preparing to monitor the presidential elections on 4 March. In December’s Duma elections they reported mass fraud and election law violations, but only a few succeeded in fighting those violations in court. Most judges simply denied allegations and refused to bring law violators to justice. Yabloko activists claim that Russian courts are not independent, leaving the violations unprosecuted.
Russia’s leading independent election monitors’ association, GOLOS, also questions the independence of Russian courts. Deputy director Grigory Melkonyants told Index that election results cannot be disputed in court, as judges refuse to take evidence of violations into consideration.
In the run up to the parliamentary elections, GOLOS was targeted by pro-government media for launching an interactive online map of election violations. The propaganda war against GOLOS is now restarting as they gear up for the presidential elections. After launching a new map of violations, the organisation received a document demanding that they vacate their Moscow offices on 16 January. Police visited a joint event held by GOLOS and Memorial for the first time, and activists from both organisations viewed their presence as an act of “psychological pressure.” A few days before the incident, the head of the Federal Security Service department, in the Komi republic of Russia labeled the organisations as “extremists” aiming to “wreck the upcoming elections.”
With millions angered by Yavlinsky’s removal from the race, and the inability of activists to bring election law violators to justice through biased courts, many believe that the mass protests on 4 February will garner more participants than the last two demonstrations against fraudulent parliamentary elections.
16 Jan 2012 | Digital Freedom, Europe and Central Asia, Russia
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has launched a website dedicated to his run in the forthcoming presidential elections on 4 March. Minutes after the site went live on 12 January, comments in the site’s “suggestions” section called on him not to run in the presidential campaign. 98 per cent of visitors voted in favour of the comments, but the suggestions soon disappeared from the website. Bloggers quickly published screenshots, expressing concerns over censorship and noted that the website’s moderators left only comments wishing Putin success, and best wishes.
Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the censorship allegation. “The website froze for a few hours due to the huge amount of visitors,” he told RIA Novosti news agency. Eventually, after numerous blog posts and news items, the comments calling for Putin not to run were restored.
Putin did not comment on the issue and is unlikely to do so in the near future, as he has announced he won’t be taking part in pre-election debates.
Meanwhile his potential opponents in the presidential campaign are facing hard times.
The leader of The Other Russia opposition movement Eduard Limonov has filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights claiming Russia’s Central Election Committee has refused to register him as a candidate. He says the police stopped his supporters from entering the building where its meeting was to be held. Under Russian electoral law, a person who wants to run in a presidential campaign has to hold meeting with at least 500 people who sign a paper in support of the candidate, which is then passed to the Central Election Committee. Liminov’s group of initiators eventually had to hold a meeting in a bus, and the Committee refused to recognise its results.
The leaders of two political parties that did not enter the State Duma as they din’t get over the threshold of seven per cent required by the law — economist Grigory Yavlinsky of “Yabloko” and oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov of “Pravoe Delo” — had to collect the two million signatures the law demands of them to be registered. Prokhorov claims his team has accomplished the task, though a number of experts remain skeptical about the accuracy of their work. Yavlinsky is still collecting the signatures, his team has complained about the artificial obstacles Russian electoral election law creates. For example, the number of signatories from each Russian region is limited to 50,000 people. In Moscow and St Petersburg it is relatively easy to find supporters, but regional work is harder.
Candidates are given 25 days to accurately collect two million signatures. They will have to hand them in to the Central Election Committee on 18 January.
Meanwhile, Sergei Mironov of A Just Russia and Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party have been asked to become “transitional presidents” by many participants of the December rallies. The Left Front opposition movement sent a proposal to them saying should they win the elections they should carry out a comprehensive election law reform, hold new parliamentary elections in just one year and then step down. Mironov has accepted the proposal, while Zyuganov said he was ready to implement the election reform and re-run the parliamentary elections but did not like the idea of stepping down.
A similar proposal was made to all candidates by notable Russian political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky. In an article he suggested that candidates who oppose Putin should “sign a contract with voters” promising to become a transitional president. This would involve carrying out radical reforms of election legislation, police and judiciary system; limiting the president’s power through passing amendments to the constitution; holding new parliamentary elections; and then within one to one-and-a-half years stepping down to participate in early presidential elections, which would be held according to new democratic laws. The candidates are yet to respond to him.
“The core goal for opposition is not to let Putin run the country again”, says Piontkovsky, who views transitional presidency as the way to achieve that. The “contract” between presidential candidates and civil society is to be “signed” on 4 February, on a third protest action for fair elections, which is expected to be the biggest yet.
