Leave Voting To Citizens, Not Chekists
nikst
MOSCOW, June 29 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's security
agencies will play an important part in the run-up to parliamentary
elections due in December, the director of the Federal Security Service
(FSB), Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday.
Putin was speaking at a session of regional security chiefs, which was
attended by Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who made a speech.
"They (the elections) must take place in terms defined by the
Constitution, in full compliance with the norms of election legislature.
They must be free, equal, and democratic," Putin said.
Security agents will control capital flows during the election campaign and
dig up information about illegalities, he said.
"Our main task is to prevent criminals from penetrating into power. A
breakthrough has appeared in public opinion, and people are feeling the
necessity for the law enforcement agencies, and the security services in
particular, to work efficiently," he said.
Meanwhile, Putin declared, the FSB is not going to exert pressure on voters
or violate human rights in any way.
"A throwback to the past is out of the question," he told reporters,
adding that the FSB "will perform no unconstitutional functions."
Meanwhile, "the necessity for discipline and order is ripe in society," he
said. "I believe the state should create conditions for the upcoming
elections to the lower house of the Federal Assembly (parliament) to be
as transparent and open as possible," he said.
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Moscow Times
July 1, 1999
EDITORIAL: Leave Voting To Citizens, Not Chekists
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin addressed a meeting of the
Federal Security Service. His message: FSB agents have a crucial role to play
this winter in keeping undesirable elements from being elected to the
parliament.
We would disagree with the prime minister's assertion entirely. Let the
voters decide who should be in the parliament.
It's hard to imagine a situation in any democracy where the security services
should be encouraged to place their own political judgments above those of
the electorate. But it's even harder when that security service is the
not-so-reformed former KGB. This is the same organization that in April
offered parliament its cheeky and unsolicited opinion that the Duma's drive
to impeach President Boris Yeltsin was illegal.
Stepashin told his Chekists that "criminals" are about to slip into the Duma
through the December elections and called for vigilance. Now, again, this is
the same FSB that earlier this year was torn between two camps f each of them
accusing the other of running organized crime rings within the agency.
Alexander Litvinenko and two other former FSB agents told a national
television audience they had been instructed by superiors to assassinate
Russia's best-known political intriguer, tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Amid
giggles and criminal slang, the three also bragged of their own exploits,
which included kidnapping, torture and killings.
So no matter how one parses this, it seems that the FSB is having a problem
keeping contract killers out of its ranks. How is it going to keep more
run-of-the-mill criminals out of the entire national political scene?
For that matter, why should we trust Stepashin when he publicly wrings his
hands about organized crime creeping into politics? Isn't this the same
Stepashin who, as interior minister, airily announced he would ignore an
arrest order for Berezovsky issued by the prosecutor general? We are not
making a commentary here on Berezovsky, only on Stepashin's sense of duty f
here was the nation's No. 1 police officer, defiantly brushing aside orders
from the prosecutor. Berezovsky will come in his own good time and "explain
matters," was how Stepashin put it. (After this performance - to say nothing -
of Chechnya - how could self-described "democrats" applaud Stepashin as prime
minister?)
Stepashin has been vague about how FSB vigilance might translate into action.
However, he has put forward one concrete task: to keep these elections
"clean" of kompromat, compromising materials. But what is kompromat - except
evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of government officials that
finds its way into the news media? And what can the FSB do to stop this,
except muzzle the media?
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