Gorbachev push for ‘democracy’

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 18

Gorbachev push for ‘democracy’

From the Economist’s Moscow correspondent

For almost as long as anybody can remember, elections in the Soviet Union have been strictly controlled affairs, in which a single approved candidate stands for each seat and, unsurprisingly, can usually count on a good 99 per cent of the votes. Mr Mikhail Gorbachev may be about to change that. He will not, of course, be trying anything that challenges the Communist Party’s all-em-bracing supervision of Soviet life. But ordinary citizens may soon find that a little variety is the spice to add new life to their local soviets, as local councils are known in the Soviet Union. Mr Gorbachev first let it be known that he was unhappy with Soviet “democracy” in February, at the Communist Party’s congress. Complaints about housing, education, transport and health services'—- all the job of the local councils — were too frequent, he observed. He called for “corrections” in election procedures as a way of prodding local deputies into action.

He has since taken his message about the need for more local initiative on his visits around the country, most recently in his home area of the northern Caucasus, where he. said that nobody should be afraid of more democracy. Democracy, Soviet-style, will never aim to match the system in Western countries, where different political parties compete for power. One way of giving the voters more of a choice without challenging the Communist Party’s monopoly of power in the Soviet Union — arranging for more than one. candidate to stand for each seat on local councils — has recently been floated in the official press. Both Hungary and Poland, among Russia’s allies in Eastern Europe, have given this a try. Opponents of the Communist Governments say that it makes no difference, since the party (or a front organisation for it) still has to approve each candidate before his or her name can go on the ballot paper. The idea of

multiple candidacies was even floated once before in the Soviet Union, in the early 19605, but then allowed to sink. As the electoral system works at present, public organisations, such as trade unions, collective farms, units of the armed forces and even sports clubs have the same right as the Communist party to propose candidates. An election commission, about half of whose members are party or Komsomol (party youth organisation) activists, then decides which name will go forward. A large minority of the deputies currently in the Supreme Soviet, the national Parliament, are not party members, and about half the deputies who serve on local councils are from outside the party too. But all are loyal supporters of what the party stands for. Theoretically, an official candidate can be defeated if more voters vote “no” than vote "yes.” But voting “no,” or even abstaining, takes a certain effort in the Soviet Union. On voting day people who live far away are bused to the polling stations;

those unable to leave home have a ballot box brought to them. Most people simply put their ballot paper, unmarked, in the box and that is counted as a “yes.” A “no” vote entails a conspicuous walk to a special

booth in order to strike out the name on the paper. In local elections, usually only a handful of the 2m or more candidates fail to win approval. Having a choice between candidates might at least help hide those who would prefer to vote “no” to everybody. There is no law against having more than one candidate on a ballot paper, it just isn’t done. Several years ago, a well-known dissident historian, Mr Roy Medvedev, tried to stand for election but was frustrated by an electoral bureaucracy that simply ignored him. He might not fare much better, even if Mr Gorbachev changes the rules. The real aim of any change, if it happened, would be to encourage trade unions and others to nominate more upright citizens with bright ideas on improving local services. Mr Gorbachev is a firm believer in what he calls “people’s socialist self-gov-ernment.” But, for electoral purposes, some people will still be more equal than others. Copyright — The Economist