Navalny’s ‘I have a dream’ Moment in Moscow’s Mayoral Election

Moscow’s mayoral election came as a surprise when Putin’s ally, Sergey Sobyanin, announced that he would step down and run for a seat in September. Two months later everything was prepared for the first Moscow’s mayoral election in a decade: ‘over $13 million had been allocated from the Moscow budget for the mayoral election’, ‘7,000 web cameras had been installed at the polling stations to prevent electoral fraud’ and ‘over 42, 000 police officers were prepared to ensure security during Sunday’s vote’.[1]

Although Russian elections are not expected to be intriguing (at the beginning, it looked like it would be played as another win-win story for the Kremlin) these expectations proved to be wrong: the election ‘‘pitched the country into a political fervour that it has not seen for years’’.[2]

The main ‘hero’ of the election was certainly Navalny. Despite being denied television time and sentenced to five years in prison on theft charges, Navalny managed to win 27 percent of the vote and pose a serious challenge to the president’s power base in Moscow.  

So, how significant are Navalny’s chances to maintain his support base in Moscow and what the election results really mean for both the Kremlin and Navalny?

Navalny’s path to the mayoral elections

Alexei Navalny, a 37 year-old lawyer, burst onto the political arena back in 2008 as an anti-corruption blogger and later became the face of the Russian non-systemic opposition and the Moscow protest movement, which occurred after the 2011 Duma election that were generally characterised as flawed.[3]

In July, a Kirov court sentenced him to five years in prison on charges of embezzlement. Navalny’s supporters claim that it was ‘‘politically motivated and meant to bar him from political office’’.[4]  However, Navalny was released the day after his conviction that could be indirectly interpreted as Sobyanin’s move to create ‘fair’ and ‘competitive’ elections that will stimulate the legitimacy of Putin’s regime. [5] As a result, Navalny came to the election with no campaign experience, little money and the Kremlin’s attempts to discredit him and his campaign.

The elections and its aftermath...

...for the Kremlin

The official count gave Sobyanin 51.37 percent of the vote which could lead to a misleading assumption that the authorities ‘confidently’ won the election as their candidate returned to his post. In reality, however, Sobyanin scored only a relative victory (just above the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a second-round ballot) and failed to mobilize the authorities’ traditional electorate (before the election public opinion polls such as Levada reported an over 60 percent electoral base for the incumbent mayor).[6]

Moreover, according to Lipman, ‘‘Moscow vote on Sunday was also a graphic illustration of dwindling public support for Putin’s system’’.[7] Indeed, in recent years, polling numbers have indicated some decline in Putin’s high approval ratings and in the 2012 presidential election, Putin himself polled only 47 percent of the vote in Moscow, his lowest result in all of Russia’s districts.[8]

The election has also revealed that the Kremlin’s new survival tactic (which Shevtsova described as ‘‘let opposition candidate compete, but without the right to win’’[9]) has turned out a fiasco because it ‘‘can work only when levels of political activeness are low and when the authorities throw all the weight of their resources behind their candidates’’.[10]

...for Navalny

It could be argued that Alexei Navalny gained most from the election: he exceeded expectations and drew 27.2 percent of the vote, which brought him from an anti-corruption blogger, with an approval rating of approximately 3 percent at the start of the campaign, into an opposition politician of national scale.[11]

He managed to mobilize his protest electorate with ‘his army of youth followers’ and ran a creative and energetic ‘American-style’ campaign that was a ‘breath of fresh air’ in Putin’s regime of ‘manages democracy’.  

Navalny knew that he will not be able to win the election; however, his main aim was ‘‘to create a support base and turn thousands of volunteers into a political force’’.[12]  Despite being barred from the largest-audience media and other harassment directed against him and his campaigners, he achieved his goal and was able to gain the support of over a quarter of Muscovites.   

However, it could be pointed out that ‘‘the crucial factor in Mr. Navalny’s favour was the low turnout of voters (roughly 32 percent). Whereas Mr. Navalny’s motivated supporters turned up, many of Mr. Sobyanin’s  potential voters did not bother to vote, safe in the assumption that he would win anyway, because this is what the Kremlin wants’’.[13]

The post-election situation and Navalny’s future have generated new uncertainties. The authorities have announced that the campaign is over and Sobyanin is the winner, whereas Navalny insists on a second round. How this disagreement will be resolved, what will happen to the non-systemic opposition leader, and what the higher court’s ruling will be on his verdict?[14]

Alexei Navalny may lose his appeal and return to prison, which would exclude him from participating in Russian politics and holding public office, keeping him in prison until after the 2018 presidential election.[15] But can Putin really risk with his regime’s legitimacy and lock up a man who secured twenty-seven present of the mayoral vote? These choices will be hard to make for the Russian president.[16]