Watered-Down Democracy Won’t Be Missed

Today, when this frigid quarter of the Arctic Circle conducts Russia’s last direct election for governor, many will heave a sigh of relief.

Incumbent governor Vladimir Butov, who constantly feuded with the oil companies squatting in this town like crows in a sparrow’s nest, was criminally charged with abuse of office and assault, disqualified from running for a third term and thrown out of the race. His press secretary was hospitalized after being assaulted by three unidentified men outside her apartment.

Political consultants of uncertain provenance flew in on a small turboprop from Moscow, feeding dark reports of Kremlin intervention, oil company maneuvering, secret cooperation pacts among rival candidates and millions of dollars in campaign funding from unknown sources swirling around town. When voters finally go to the polls today, their choice will be down to two men, both with connections to the oil industry.

As the campaign for governor and parliament draws to a close, the mood in this town of 18,800, seat of the 68,224-square-mile Nenets Autonomous District, is one of confusion and dismay. Many voters were equally contemptuous of the current authorities and the candidates vying to take their place.

“In my opinion, we don’t have a right to choose as it is. Whoever we choose, we’ll get the same thing. They’re both connected to the oil industry,” said Vera Artemyeva, the chief economist for the local post office. “As for the government we have now, I don’t think they did a good job at all. In fact, I think they failed in every possible way.”

The Nenets Autonomous District sprawls along the northern coast of Russia on the White and Barents seas, a cold no-man’s-land 1,380 miles north of Moscow that for thousands of years was home only to indigenous Nenets reindeer herders, hunters and trappers.

A sawmill helped launch the town of Naryan Mar beginning in the 1930s, but the region’s remoteness -- 480 miles from the nearest railroad station -- kept it largely forgotten. Today it is one of the most sparsely populated areas of Russia, its base of 41,800 residents slowly shrinking each year.

The reason that millions of dollars are being spent on electing a governor here is the 3.6 billion tons of oil and gas reserves discovered under the tundra. Although there has been prospecting there for decades, the area has been targeted only recently for major development and foreign investment. Companies like Russian Lukoil, Conoco-Phillips and Total have just begun the rush in; oil production grew by 45% in 2003, and authorities say they have not even begun to tap the region’s hydrocarbon potential.

Almost since being elected in 1996, Butov has been locked in conflict with the oil companies over terms of production-sharing agreements, his demands for additional taxes to be paid to the local treasury and, his opponents say, business disputes involving companies of his own and his associates that were in the periphery of the oil business.

“What we have is a struggle -- a struggle for economic interests. And my opponents managed to arrange the process in such a way that I lost the struggle,” Butov said in a recent interview.

By all accounts, the charismatic governor might have handily won a third term had he not been removed from the race in a case he claims was trumped up by political opponents. Unlike some of the 15 candidates who ran in the first electoral round Jan. 23, Butov has lived in Nenets for years.

As the oil money began flowing, Butov nearly doubled pensions, boosted subsidies for farmers and installed computers in schools in the most remote settlements. By the end of his second term, he had increased personal incomes fivefold and created a budget reserve of $53.5 million, and he was openly at war with the oil companies.

But many Nenets residents say the oil bonanza extended no further than the large Lukoil building in Naryan Mar popularly known as “The Bastille.” Many homes, even in the capital city, are still without running water, toilets or telephones, while high-paying oil jobs go mainly to outsiders, who are flown in for a few months at a time and housed in tidy new apartment blocks. The local maternity ward has been plagued for years with a staph bacteria problem; the facility can’t be disinfected because there is nowhere else to put the mothers and babies.

Even the city’s only church, located on prime real estate in the town square, was recently shut down and its priest and parishioners locked out after the elaborate wooden structure was mysteriously transferred to an oil prospecting company -- with reported connections to the governor -- for a fraction of its value.

“When Butov came to power, he promised to turn this place into a United Arab Emirates. He’s been around two terms already, and the United Arab Emirates hasn’t happened yet,” said Yevgeny Tarashenko, a graduate of a vocational institute who has been able to find a job only as a night watchman.

“Now the next one’s coming, and he’ll make promises for another five years. That’s 15 years altogether. Well, 15 years is a huge chunk of a human life,” he said.

Tarashenko, 28, lives in a tiny, two-room flat with his wife and young son. They share a primitive toilet with two other families and go to the public bath to shower. An electric burner on a table in the corner constitutes the kitchen.

“I can tell you, my life is going to end, and your life is going to end, before we see any kind of democracy in this country,” he said.

Putin ordered an end to direct gubernatorial elections last year after terrorists took a school hostage in the southern town of Beslan. The move was widely criticized as an assault on democracy, but supporters said it would allow coherent, centralized oversight of difficult upcoming reforms and prevent the election of corrupt and incompetent governors who might win by manipulating local campaigns. Putin’s first appointee, in the eastern Russian region of Primorye, was sworn in Friday. Others are to follow later this year.

Butov, who initially was one of the few regional governors to publicly criticize Putin’s move to create a “vertical of power” from the regions straight to the Kremlin, has changed his tune.

“I think the president made a wise and correct decision,” he said.

Sergei Kolmakov of the Foundation for the Development of Parliamentarianism in Russia said the move to appoint governors might eliminate corrupt and incompetent governors, but it would not assure citizens social justice.

“It is clear that once Russia switches over to appointing governors, the standards of living for people in Nenets will not rise to those of Kuwaitis. Nothing like this ever happens,” he said. “In this sense, Nenets is truly a microcosm of the whole of Russia, like Russia in miniature: a land heavily endowed with natural riches but inhabited by people living in appalling indigence. And in Nenets, on this tiny patch of land, all these disproportions acquire outrageous dimensions.”

Butov obtained a special resolution from the local parliament setting aside term limits, and was set to run for a third term when local prosecutors obtained a court order barring him from the race. Prosecutors also opened several abuse-of-office investigations into the governor and his financial dealings.

The corruption investigations were dropped, and some of the prosecutors who launched them were fired for unexplained reasons. But in a case Butov claimed was part of a long line of political attacks, a court in St. Petersburg in December convicted him of beating up a traffic cop who had attempted to stop him on his way to a meeting with Putin.

With Butov out of the race, the door was opened to a free-for-all of accusations, counteraccusations and a disastrous attempt on the part of the Kremlin to put forward its own candidate, oil company executive Alexander Shmakov. Shmakov was openly endorsed by Putin’s representative in the region and the pro-Putin United Russia party, which in this independent-minded region propelled him back to fourth place.

Two front-runners will face each other in today’s runoff: Igor Kochin, the 30-year-old who was United Russia’s party leader in Naryan Mar before the party expelled him for challenging Shmakov, and Alexei Barinov, the former federal inspector in the district who also once headed a local subsidiary of Lukoil.

Because both have support from the oil companies, many people see the outcome of the race as a fait accompli, no matter who wins.

Some argue that Butov’s wars with the oil companies hurt more than they helped. Large judgments were assessed against the government when companies claimed their licenses weren’t being honored, and delays in ramping up production while the arguments went on ultimately cost far more than they gained, opponents say.

“The old authorities were unable to establish contact with the oil companies. They were in a constant state of war. Without deciding who’s right and who’s wrong, the result is only too obvious,” Kochin said.

“Does it really matter whether the problems we have are the result of corruption or ineptitude? I think the new authorities need to talk less and act more,” he said. “The population has become sick and tired of all these fairy tales about how wonderful life is going to become tomorrow.”

Barinov said the authorities could have helped avert the bankruptcies of many important businesses in the region.

“The list is way too long. We’ll run out of time before I reach the end of the list of what has been done wrong,” he said.

“Blocks of housing flats should have been built. Government employees’ salaries should have been increased.... And to do that, it is necessary to cooperate with all of the companies which have the money and are ready to invest in this country.”

Butov reportedly hoped in vain until the end to convince Putin to set aside the court’s ruling and allow him to run.

He returned late Thursday night on his private jet from a meeting in St. Petersburg with Putin’s envoy, Ilya Klebanov.

“He understands what has happened, what the real situation is, and how it should have been handled,” Butov said cryptically during a late-night meeting at his office. “I could have won in the first round, if I would have been allowed to run, and everything would have ended at that.”