Inexplicably, only the ruling party decided to use the president's name in its March election campaign.
Huge street banners for United Russia (UR) appeared in Tula several weeks before the March elections. In the name of the president and the prime minister, the ruling party urged city residents to come to polling stations on March 14 and elect deputies to the local Duma and mayor's office. President Dmitry Medvedev's name was first on the banners, giving rise to a rumour that the head of state has challenged the leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the UR. Some of the party's local members even claim that Medvedev was a UR member before his presidential campaign.
Elections for the city Duma will take place in this Hero City on March 14. Its chairman will automatically become the city's new mayor. A resident of Tula asked NG: "Has the president ever mentioned his UR membership? Why do we have street banners and billboards with Medvedev urging us to vote for the UR party?" He said that such "unscrupulous use of the president's name" discouraged him and four of his family members from attending the elections, "because it is already clear which party is bound to prevail and take almost all the seats in the city's parliament."
This NG correspondent decided to find out whether the words "For Medvedev! For Putin! For United Russia!" corresponds to a political reality. Does it mean that the president, who is not a member or even supporter of the party, has decided to vote for it?
People in the Tula UR regional department were initially confused by which promotional materials we had in mind. Oleg Belyanin, the chairman of the Executive Committee, needed time to look up the details and establish whether the election slogans were put up in Tula. "Maybe our opponents are using black marketing. There were such cases recently," he said. After some time, Belyanin confirmed that slogans with the names of the president and prime minister were made on behalf of his department and on party money.
"These are our banners. This is our agitprop idea," maintained the deputy secretary of the UR cell. "It corresponds to all legal norms. We do not need special permission to use anyone's name in agitprop materials. We are not using Dmitry Medvedev's statements or image."
As NG discovered, participants in yesterday's meeting of the Central Executive Committee (CEC), which is devoted to the election campaign in the regions, discussed a similar situation in Ryazan, where there were also banners and other agitprop materials with the images of Medvedev and Putin. CIC member Yevgeny Kolyushin reaffirmed that both the president and the prime minister agreed to the use of their images and quotations from their speeches in the election campaign in the Ryazan Region.
The press service of the presidential administration confirmed this information, but without specifying the regions involved: "The president has given his permission to use his image in the election campaign. More time will be required to find out in which regions this can be done."
Apparently, then, Medvedev did not object to the use of his name and image in the elections, but only the ruling party decided to use them. Could this all be a fluke? The president repeatedly spoke about the need for equitable participation of other political parties in the elections. Did they ask him for the same permission? An NG source in the presidential administration said that "the UR leadership received permission for the use of Medvedev's statements and image" and recalled that the top UR representatives were Vladimir Putin, the party leader, and Boris Gryzlov, the head of its Supreme Council.
Alexei Malashenko, a member of the Research Council of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, commented: "This is a very interesting situation. Politicians in the provinces were wise in using the president and prime minister's brands simultaneously." He believes that even Medvedev will not be upset if he finds out that he was listed as a UR supporter: "Relations inside the tandem are not definite. Moreover, Medvedev's ratings have been growing recently, and this is why members of the UR and some other political parties are doing all they can to position themselves as the president's allies. The UR members in Tula were quite smart in using this fact in their promotional campaign." But Malashenko thinks that sooner or later, "this pre-election bond will break, and it will be interesting to find out which of the two they will choose."
Yevgeny Minchenko, director of the International Institute of Political Analysis, does not see anything unusual in the promotional strategy: "This is good election technology, and it is clear that Medvedev won't object to it, because both he and the prime minister have high ratings." He said that the communists should also ask the head of state for such permission instead of inventing some socialist brand of modernisation. Minchenko is convinced that "it will benefit Medvedev if different political forces express the desire to identify with him."
Roza Tsvetkova
