Business intensified in the elections of the Irkutsk Legislative Assembly after the change of governor

In the Irkutsk region on September 10, the first elections will be held after the change of governor (in 2015-2019 he was the first secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party Sergey Levchenko). Now we are preparing for them. In particular, on May 22, electronic voting begins for the selection of United Russia candidates. 335 people showed up for the primaries. There are 45 seats in the Legislative Assembly itself, for which not only United Russia members, but also representatives of other parties will compete, it is elected according to a proportional system: 23 mandates from lists and 22 from single-member districts.

The previous elections to the legislative assembly of the Irkutsk region in 2018 United Russia lost to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation on the lists, gaining 37.78% (the communists received 40%). Now United Russia is faced with the task of obtaining more than two-thirds of the mandates, says the source of Vedomosti in the regional branch of the party (now they have 20 deputy seats). “Since we lost in the previous elections, there are many “free” [для партии] districts,” the source said.

At the same time, judging by the composition of the participants in the United Russia primaries, a serious rotation in the regional parliament can occur due to candidates who are to some extent connected with En +. Some of them, as a representative of the press service of the regional branch of the party told Vedomosti, showed up to participate in the preliminary voting on April 24-26 (the last day for submitting documents was April 27).

Vedomosti has counted at least eight candidates who hold positions related to the company. All of them ran in the primaries by territorial groups (into which the party list is divided), but some also want to run in single-member districts. For example, Evgeny Zenkin, Managing Director of PJSC Rusal Bratsk Aluminum Plant, who submitted documents before the rest.

Also participating in the primaries are Alexei Kozyura, Deputy Director for Government Relations at Eurosibenergo – Distributed Generation LLC, Vladimir Smagin, Deputy General Director for Development and Government Relations at Vostsibugol Company, and Dmitry, Deputy Head of the Production and Technical Department at Novo-Irkutsk CHPP Tuturin, General Director of JSC Irkutskenergo Oleg Prichko and Head of the Monitoring Service for Hydraulic Structures of Eurosibenergo-Hydrogeneration (Ust-Ilimskaya HPP branch) Andrey Svetlichny.

Among the other representatives of this business, declared for the primaries, there is not a single current deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Irkutsk region. For example, the director of the department for interaction with government bodies of JSC “Eurosibenergo» Bator Tsybikov is a member of the United Russia faction in the People’s Khural (Parliament) of Buryatia and is a member of the Presidium of the Political Council of the Irkutsk regional branch of the ruling party. Maria Otchenash, the head of the programs of the Rusal Foundation, the Center for Social Programs and the curator of its grant programs in the region, sits in the Duma of the city of Shelekhov (Irkutsk region).

In a number of territorial groups where people associated with the company showed up, in fact, the current deputies of the legislature of the Irkutsk region do not participate in the primaries, which may indicate a compromise regarding the nomination of business representatives. Single-mandate deputies Natalya Dikusarova, Aleksey Krasnoshtanov and Olga Bezrodnykh, who compete in territorial groups with Tsybikov, Tuturin and Prichko, respectively, are also declared in districts, therefore, they can avoid direct competition. Competitor of Svetlichny, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly Artem Lobkov, who was elected to the current convocation on the list, did not appear in the primaries in the single-mandate constituency.

A source close to the regional administration notes that the representatives of the company, with such an active participation in the process, will be “overrepresented” in the Legislative Assembly. “Business is tired of depending on the governor in matters of interaction that are beneficial to it, and is trying to change the situation,” he says.

The Irkutsk region has the lowest electricity tariff in Russia: in 2023, residents of the region pay 1.41–1.42 rubles. for 1 kWh. In 2018, En + proposed to transfer part of the Rusal load to all consumers of the Federal Grid Company, Kommersant wrote. Low electricity tariffs have brought miners to the region, who consume it at the level of industrial facilities.

In this regard, En+ insists on introducing a differentiated tariff based on consumption volumes in the Irkutsk region. On December 8, 2022, Governor Igor Kobzev (United Russia) announced that the authorities would not introduce differentiated tariffs for the population.

However, in Rusal they answered that the candidates go to the primaries “as private individuals”. “The company does not set any tasks for them. The company has almost 60,000 people of different views and beliefs: among them there are many social activists, activists, and participants in volunteer movements. Those of them who decide to participate in the socio-political life of the region are not hindered by the company, provided that they somehow find for themselves a solution to the question of where they work and what they directly do. That is, they either get involved in solving social problems relevant to the regions on a voluntary basis, or leave the company in order to fully devote themselves to social and political activities,” Rusal said.

The participation of business representatives in the primaries of United Russia is a kind of return to the period of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the systematic participation of business in the politics of the Irkutsk region was most noticeable, says political analyst Alexander Kynev. According to him, in recent years, this influence in the region has fallen significantly, and in the 2018 elections, construction companies were the main players.

“This is the case when the new is the well-forgotten old. Everything will depend on agreements with the elites, primarily with the regional administration, as well as on the campaign itself,” he told Vedomosti. “Business every time has to build new tactics, including promoting its people through different parties, as it can happen now. Such tactics can lead to conflicts, but I think that the parties will eventually come to an agreement among themselves,” political analyst Rostislav Turovsky believes.

“The practice of creating pools of loyal deputies in legislative structures at various levels in Russia is an absolute norm,” says political consultant Vasily Damov. “Usually, to form such pools, companies prefer to elect their own top management as deputies.”