Russia is to hold parliamentary elections on December 4, President Dmitry Medvedev announced yesterday, kicking off a political season that will culminate in March presidential polls.
Mr Medvedev told a meeting attended by Russia’s main party leaders of his decision fixing the date for the elections for the State Duma lower house and then signed the corresponding decree, the Kremlin said in a statement.
“I hope that over the summer period you revived your energies for the upcoming political battles, as today I am signing the decree about the State Duma elections,” Mr Medvedev told the politicians.
He expressed hope that the new State Duma would reflect the “political preferences of the widest circle of our citizens, the variety of their opinions and interests”.
The parliamentary polls will see the ruling United Russia party seek to maintain its dominance in the State Duma, which over the last few years has become mostly a rubber stamp for Kremlin and government decisions.
Criticism has been sometimes non-existent from the Communists, nationalist Liberal Democratic Party – both run by the same leaders for two decades – and the supposedly oppositional A Just Russia. The liberal opposition has no seats in this Parliament.
However, these elections will be the first for the pro-business Right Cause party under its billionaire new leader Mikhail Prokhorov, who has promised to turn the party into a force capable of challenging United Russia.
Mr Prokhorov, once Russia’s richest man and the current owner of US basketball team New Jersey Nets, has brought a fresh tone to Russian politics. However sceptics argue that even his party has implicit Kremlin backing.
The meeting was attended by the leaders of all seven of Russia’s registered political parties, as well as the mysterious but hugely powerful Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov.
Conspicuously absent was the vehemently anti-Kremlin party of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former Cabinet minister Boris Nemtsov, which the authorities refused to register in June, disqualifying it from the polls.