Lack of choice blamed for electoral defeat.

Press, 30 March 1989, Page 8

Lack of choice blamed for electoral defeat.

NZPA-Reuter Moscow

Voters’ anger at being given little or no choice of candidates appears to have been a major factor in the mass defeat of regional Communist party leaders in last Sunday’s Parliamentary elections, the Soviet news media said.

A string of party officials, including a junior Politburo member, Yuri Solovyov, and leaders of six major cities, were among those rejected by voters in the first multi-candidate elections in 70 years.

As results continued to come in yesterday, it emerged that, in many constituencies where only one

or two candidates had stood, no one got the minimum 50 per cent of the vote needed to qualify. “Somebody tried to deprive people of the right to choose,” a television commentator, Vladimir Tikhomirov, said, noting that a re-election would be necessary in 168 constituencies where just one or two candidates had stood.

“I understand the bitterness of those who were defeated, but those who were running unopposed and did not get the necessary majority must feel even worse,” he said in a commentary on the main evening news programme “Vremya.”

“The decisive factor was not the personal qualities of the candidate but the fact that some people were trying to clear the way for them too thoroughly.” elections to the new Soviet Parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, were billed as the first genuinely contested elections since just after the 1917 revolution and were a key part of President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. Some 1500 members to the 2250-seat Congress of People’s Deputies were to be elected from regional districts with the remaining third set aside for nominees from public

organisations, including the Communist Party. However, amid allegations of rigging and other abuses, it was revealed before the poll that voters in about a quarter of the regional districts had no choice at all of candidate. In many others, local party and Government leaders, keen to ensure a place in the Congress, appear to have put pressure on local electoral commis/sions not to register at least some of their rivals. In the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, both the first secretary, Konstantin Masik, and the Mayor, Valentin Zgursky, stood unopposed. “Many Kiev residents

.saw in that a violation of democratic principles and demonstrated their attitude to elections without choice by deleting the only name on the ballot paper,” the Government newspaper “Izvestia” said. “Izvestia” said that in Armenia voters showed their anger at lack of choice by staying away in droves, recording what appeared to have been the country’s lowest electoral turnout. Ironically, it was in the Baltic republic of Estonia, where it was decided to register all those nominated as candidates, that local party and Government leaders appeared to have been among the

most successful.

Under the Soviet political system, defeat in Sunday’s elections does not necessarily have any direct further consequences for the defeated officials.

However, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gennady Gerasimov, indicated on Tuesday that some at least might also be stripped of their party posts. “Party leaders must have not only the confidence of the party but the confidence of the people,” Mr Gerasimov told a news conference. The party might take a “corresponding decision” in the case of a defeated city party leader, he said.