BULLETINS OF CENTER FOR JOURNALISM IN EXTREME SITUATIONS
MEDIA AND ELECTIONS
MONTHLY BULLETIN OF EVENTS IN RUSSIAISSUE NO. 9 (31), FEBRUARY 20 - 26, 2004
Author – Analyst Of Center For Journalism In Extreme Situations,
Candidate Of Political Science Mikhail Melnikov (mel@cjes.ru)
I. Events of the Week
1. The Russian Central Election Commission on February 23 rejected the complaints filed by presidential candidates Nikolai Kharitonov and Irina Khakamada against incumbent President Vladimir Putin, whom they accused of violating the rules governing election canvassing. The commission found that Rossiya television the airing of the 30 minutes long meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign representatives on February 12 was “aimed at providing information to the voters.” Therefore, the commission decided that neither Putin nor Rossiya are in breach of the law.
Vladimir Putin met with his campaign representatives on the premises of Moscow Central University on February 12, where he gave a speech on the work he has done as president of the Russian Federation over the past four years and shared with the voters what he plans to do in the next four years should he be re-elected for a second term. The meeting was broadcast by Channel One and Rossiya (the latter broadcast the entire meeting, which last a total of 29.5 minutes, live). In the next few days, the presidential speech (which was marked “paid out of the election fund of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin”) was published by several central newspapers: Izvestiya (February 13), Gudok (February 14), Argumenty i Fakty (February 18), and Komsomolskaya Pravda (February 20).
Nikolai Kharitonov (presidential candidate from the Communist Party) accused Putin of violating the election canvassing regulations by not paying for the broadcasting of his speech on Rossiya television out of his election fund, and Irina Khakamada (independent presidential candidate) filed a complaint against the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), which she accused of giving preference to Putin over the other candidates.
The Central Election Commission’s working group for information disputes considered those complaints on February 19 and recommended that the complaints be rejected, saying that the live broadcasting of Putin’s speech did not constitute election canvassing. The group came to the conclusion that the amount of time the television channels gave to Putin’s speech “can under certain conditions be considered as giving preference in the coverage of a candidate’s election canvassing activities). However, the experts found that the candidates had not provided evidence that the channels planned for the broadcasts to constitute election canvassing. “Therefore, we cannot consider this broadcast election canvassing,” Sergei Bolshakov, an expert with the Central Election Commission, said. As a result, 13 of the 17 members of the Central Election Commission’s working group recommended that Kharitonov’s and Khakamada’s complaints be rejected.
The authors of the complaints refused to personally attend the session of the Central Election Commission where their complaints were discussed and sent their lawyers to represent them. The lawyers failed to convince the commission and the decision to reject the complaints was made on a 11/3 vote (Central Election Commission Secretary Olga Zastrozhnaya abstained and Yelena Dubrovkina (Yabloko) and Yevgeny Kolyushkin (Communist Party) voted against rejecting the complaints. As a result, the Central Election Commission decided to reject Kharitonov’s and Khakamada’s complaints, but urged the television channels "to strictly follow the federal legislation and not to violate the principle of equality of candidates in the future.”
2. Irina Khakamada on February 26 asked the Supreme Court of Russia to cancel the Central Election Commission’s decision on her complaint against the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK). Khakamada believes the commission’s decision is illegal.
For more details on this conflict, see the Conflict of the Week section of this bulletin.
3. Over 300 journalists have already obtained accreditation to work with the information center Elections-2004. I the five days following the beginning of accreditation, the center received some 70 accreditation requests from foreign mass media (including 40 television companies and some 30 information agencies, newspapers and magazines), the press service for the Russian Central Election Commission said. Accreditation requests have been received from over 20 Russian media, including five television and radio companies and 16 information agencies, newspapers and magazines.
Accreditation with the center ends on March 1.
4. The annual report issued by the U.S. Department of State says the human rights situation in Russia leaves a lot to be desired. The document talks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, and also the recent parliamentary elections and the presidential elections in the Chechen Republic. The U.S. believes that Putin’s attempts to consolidate power are only exacerbating the human rights situation. As to the elections, the U.S. Department of State has called them “manipulative.” In addition, the U.S. is confident that the Russian press is experiencing political pressure. According to the department, this is indicated by the media bias in the coverage of the recent elections in Russia.
5. The Russian and foreign press are commenting on the dismissal of the Russian government, and many journalists tie it to the upcoming presidential elections in Russia. Well-known publicist Otto Latsis in his column in the newspaper Russky Kuryer said: “The publication of the name of the new president right before the presidential elections will give these elections an additional function: they will in effect also become a referendum on the future presidential policy […], a referendum in which the majority of the population will have already said yes.”
Financial Times said that Putin made his sudden decision to dismiss the government at a time when the election campaign in Russia was becoming “boring and absolutely predictable,” and New York Times said that Putin’s decision provided an element of political intrigue when his opponents were criticizing the election campaign as a caricature on democracy.
A CJES legal expert’s commentary on the government dismissal is located at the end of this bulletin.
II. The Press in Federal and Regional Elections
1. The people of the Mariy El Republic are witnessing a very original political action on local television in the mornings. The action looks as follows: first Ernst Matskyavichus, a host of a federal political program, appears on the screen. Some time later, he is interrupted in mid-sentence and the program is replaced with a regional television program. Both federal and local television programs are broadcast in the republic. Instead of the program Elections-2004, the local television broadcasts local programming completely unrelated to the upcoming elections. The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets v Mariy El has found out that the local broadcasters are not doing those thing because they want to squeeze election canvassing materials from the broadcasting network. The problem is that the organizers of the election campaign in the republic have not submitted any requests to the local television, and the television and radio company Mariy El has the right to fill in the space with whatever it pleases, which it is doing.
2. The Sverdlovsk region’s journalists have not been able to ask presidential candidate Sergei Glazyev during a press conference he gave in Yekaterinburg on February 25. Glazyev’s press secretary Nelli Orlova told Interfax news agency that when Glazyev began answering questions from journalists, a group of policemen entered the building and said there was a bomb scare and everyone must leave the building immediately. Glazyev intends to make a statement on this incident, because he believes it could have been organized by the local authorities who wanted to prevent the press conference from taking place. The Yekaterinburg law enforcement agencies are not commenting on the situation.
3. Information coming from the Novgorod region shows that candidates to elected positions in Russian regions firmly believe that scandals are essential to success in elections.
Because the head of the Novgorod region (who is also a member of the region’s parliament) has recently been elected to the State Duma, elections are being prepared in the region to fill in the position in the region’s parliament which has become vacant. There are three candidates, including Yury Yakovlev (who heads the local official of the Liberal Democratic Party) and Andrei Nikonov (a former member of the Liberal Democratic Party, who was expelled for bad behavior). The conflict between the two candidates began after Yakovlev made some statements on a local radio program which Nikonov believes to defame his honor and dignity (Yakovlev accused him of property misappropriation). Nikonov demanded that the election commission punish his rival “down to canceling his registration.” The election commission explained to Nikonov that Yakovlev had not violated the law by using the radio for election canvassing. Nikonov was also told that he could contact the Novgorod state-owned television and radio company Slaviya and ask for refutation of Yakovlev’s words or file a libel lawsuit against him.
4. The Central Election Commission has received another complaint about the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK). Sergei Drevyasnikov, a resident of Moscow, accused the company of violating the election legislation. “VGTRK (like other central broadcasters) has systematically violated the election legislation governing the order of election canvassing since the day the Russian presidential candidates were registered,” Drevyasnikov’s complaint reads. For example, Drevyasnikov said that even before the election campaign officially began, “VGTRK allocated a considerable amount of air time not only for covering the activities of practically al candidates, but also for analytical comments on those activities.” Drevyasnikov believes “this constitutes a violation of the rules governing election canvassing.” In addition, he believes that information materials “contained in analytical programs in effect constitute election canvassing.”
Drevyasnikov has conducted an extensive analysis of the materials aired by the programs Vesti, Vesti Nedeli, and Zerkalo (Rossiya television). According to calculations, “the total amount of time given to the coverage of activities by candidate Kharitonov was under 18 minutes. Drevyasnikov also calculated the amount of air time given to Irina Khakamada, Oleg Malyshkin, Ivan Rybkin, and Sergei Glazyev.
5. The mayoral and city council election campaign continues in Krasnoyarsk. The most popular advertising methods used by the candidates are meetings with the voters and election canvassing in the street. Other methods of election canvassing are not broadly used in Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk political scientist Sergei Komaritsyn believes that the most effective method of election canvassing is election canvassing in the mass media. However, the current candidates (both to the post of mayor and to posts in the city council) do not seem to be using this powerful resource, he said. “With the other conditions being equal, the most ejective technologies are those involving the media. But there is no active election campaigning in the media,” he said.
III. Quotes of the Week
1. An abstract from the decision made by the Russian Central Election Commission on the complaints filed by presidential candidates Nikolai Kharitonov and Irina Khakamada reads:
“On the basis of the practice of media coverage of pre-election events by state-owned mass media currently existing in Russia and in other countries, and also taking into account the traditional forms of presentation of materials in information programs, giving a considerable amount of time in the course of one day to the coverage of a pre-election activity of one presidential candidate in information programs can be considered not quite in line with the provisions of the law […] aimed at providing unrestricted access to the media on a non-discriminatory basis. At the same time, […] the Russian Central Election Commission has received written explanations from officials representing OAO Channel One and the federal unitary enterprise VGTRK, from which it follows that these broadcasters intend to ensure that the candidates have equal rights during the information coverage of their election canvassing activities in the course of the election campaign.”
2. While meeting with the press in St. Petersburg on February 25, presidential candidate Irina Khakamada said she believes that in the next couple of years anyone can become president of Russia, “even Mickey Mouse, if Vladimir Putin designates him as his successor […] Russia swallows its successors and furiously chews them without even switching on its consciousness.”
IV. Conflict of the Week
Presidential candidate Irina Khakamada issued an official statement on February 24 stating that “the presidential election campaign in Russia is starting to look like lawlessness and lies.” In this situation, competition of ideas, programs and alternatives is impossible, the statement says. “I am drawing the attention of the media and the public only to certain facts,” Khakamada says. “On February 20, the Central Election Commission rejected our complaint about the violation of the equality of candidates by Rossiya television, which aired a 29 minutes long speech given by presidential candidate Vladimir Putin on a live program. After we have received an official document from the Central Election Commission, we will contest this decision in the Moscow Basmanny Court. We are prepared to go further, down to the European Court of Human Rights,” Khakamada’s statement says.
Khakamada’s statement also says a complaint will be filed with the Central Election Commission about the federal television channels, which have scheduled the airing of televised debates for periods of time which are not prime time. Khakamada has also asked the Central Election to explain why the Central Election Commission’s television ads contained an almost complete ad of United Russia, which people associate with this party and Vladimir Putin. Khakamada also pointed out the fact that NTV first scheduled political debates on its Svoboda Slova program and them cancelled them , and also the fact that the election advertisements are not aired by NTV during prime time, which means that some voters are unable to hear the positions of all candidates.
The conflict between the Central Election Commission and Khakamada is being actively commented on in the Russian press.
The newspaper Kommersant says that the working group on information disputes, which met on February 19, suggested rejecting the complaints filed by Kharitonov and Khakamada because it decided that the live airing of Vladimir Putin’s speech does not constitute election canvassing. The group admitted that the amount of air time given to that meeting “exceeded the amount of air time usually given […] to reports, which under certain conditions can be seen as giving preference in the coverage of a candidate’s election canvassing activities.” However, experts decided that only a single violation of this nature is not enough to impose sanctions on a candidate.
Moskovsky Komsomolets in its report on this issue simply related the events that occurred during the Central Election Commission’s meeting and its results. However, the ironical tone of the report leaves no doubt about the paper’s attitude to the commission’s decision. “The Central Election Commission gave a genius verdict. It admitted that the event in itself constituted election canvassing. But it did not find any evidence indicating that the broadcasters were conducting election canvassing for Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin],” the report reads.
The paper was very ironical about one of the reasons given by Central Election Commission official Sergei Bolshakov to prove that the broadcasters did not violate the law by airing Putin’s speech. Bolshakov said: “On hat day, the other candidates were not conducting any election canvassing activities and therefore no one could have refused them air time. Which means that the principle of equality of candidates was not violated.” “It’s a pity that Khakamada and Kharitonov do not have a gift for prophesying. If they did, they would have scheduled meetings with their campaign representatives for that day. And we would see how much time they would have been given,” Moskovsky Komsomolets said.
On February 26, Khakamada filed a statement with the Supreme Court of Russia demanding the cancellation of the Central Election Commission’s decision on her complaint, saying it is illegal. Khakamada says the Central Election Commission “incorrectly qualified her complaint about a violation of the election legislation […] the candidate’s demand to make a protocol of administrative violation was ignored,” Khakamada’s statement says.
Commentary Prepared by CJES Legal Expert Boris Panteleyev
After publishing its report on the parliamentary elections in Russia, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) immediately announced that it was sending its observers to the Russian presidential elections.
According to the OSCE report on the parliamentary elections in Russia, they failed to meet some of the OSCE standards, including violations of the voter registration procedures, the use of administrative resources in the regions, xenophobic statements by some candidates, etc. The report placed special emphasis on the fact that journalists covering the elections experienced pressure. Christian Strohal, the head of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said the mass media in Russia provided a distorted picture of the election campaign by being biased towards certain parties.
Now, the OSCE is again sending experts to observe the presidential elections scheduled to take place in Russia on March 14. Fifty observers will observe various aspects of the election campaign, including the media coverage, and another 400 will observe the process of voting and calculation of ballots on the day of the elections. A preliminary report will be issued on March 15 and the final report will be available about a month following the elections. The election process will be evaluated in accordance with the OSCE principles. In this connection, it is very interesting that the international experts will be evaluating the government crisis, which was artificially created in Russia, and its consequences.
Reports of such level always specify under what conditions the will of the people was expressed (namely, if it occurred during or after a natural calamity, mass riots, lack of communications, or a crisis in the administration of individuals regions or industries). It is always interesting what guided people when they made their decisions: fear or common sense?
We believe that the dismissal of the government without any clear reasons can be seen as an arranged emergency, which had a negative impact on political stability in the country. It is common knowledge that in an atmosphere of instability and fear people are more influenced by propaganda and the herd instinct. Which means that another complaint can be added to the “traditional” complaints about the Russian elections mentioned above.
