Reuters - 01.30.2006

Smooth-talking nationalist attracts Russian votes

By Christian Lowe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Dmitry Rogozin is suave, smooth-talking and, his opponents say, a racist. And he is winning over voters the Kremlin wants for itself. 

Rogozin's Rodina (Motherland) party began life three years ago as a Kremlin puppet designed to poach votes from other parties, but now it has turned on its former masters and is striking a chord with its mix of populist economics and anti-immigrant slogans. 

Many analysts say Motherland -- not the huge Communist party or the pro-Western liberals most commonly identified with Russia's opposition -- is positioned to mount the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. 

However, critics of that theory say the Kremlin will use its control of political life to neutralise Motherland before it can do any damage when it really matters: at the parliamentary election next year or a presidential vote in 2008. 

If nothing else, Motherland's success shows the public mood in Russia is becoming more nationalistic and turning away from liberal economics -- a trend the country's rulers cannot afford to ignore if they are to keep voters' support. 

"Our ideology ... is the one in the most demand in Russian society," Rogozin told Reuters in an interview. 

"So we are not just pursuing a protest vote. We are staking a claim to majority support ... We are the only party that can destroy the government's monopoly on power." 

Motherland's appeal was demonstrated last December in an election for Moscow's City Council. 

It ran a television advertisement portraying dark-skinned immigrants dropping litter and leering at a fair-skinned Russian woman. It ended with the slogan: "Let's clean the city of rubbish." 

The clip tapped into widespread resentment against the millions of mainly Muslim migrants who come to Russia's big cities from ex-Soviet republics in search of work. 

Motherland missed the ballot after a Moscow court ruled the advertisement incited racial hatred. 

But opinion polls showed the party -- which has about 30 seats in the 450-seat national parliament -- was running in second place, behind the dominant, pro-Kremlin United Russia party. 

PRETTY FACE 

"(Motherland's policies) are very, very popular with the Russian people," said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, an independent think tank. 

"Rogozin is new, he is younger, he is a good public politician which is rare in Russia. He is a handsome, tall man which is not an insignificant factor in politics," she added. 

Motherland is neither Russia's biggest nor its most popular opposition party. But Rogozin says the party he leads is the only one that is both genuinely independent from the Kremlin and has mass appeal. 

Many analysts say the two biggest groups -- the Communists and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party -- have a gentlemen's agreement with the Kremlin that they will not rock the boat. The parties deny this. 

Meanwhile the cluster of pro-Western liberals who are vehemently opposed to Putin are ignored by voters. 

"We do not fit into the (Kremlin's) scenario for elections," said Rogozin, 42, looking dapper in a suit jacket and open-necked shirt. 

A journalism graduate, Rogozin used to be a pro-Putin member of parliament. He said he broke with the Kremlin because he was fed up with officials' ineptitude and corruption. 

He comes across as a moderate with views that might not be out of place in a centre-right party in Western Europe, and he knows his party has an unsavoury reputation. 

Rogozin said the campaign advertisement was not racist and argued it was an attempt -- perhaps misjudged -- to address the issue of illegal immigration. 

Yet Rogozin said his opponents in the Kremlin would exploit issues like the ad to discredit Motherland and, possibly, to have it banned. 

"The image (presented to the West) will be like this: there is a government that is bad, but there is an opposition which is even worse," he said. 

"The (West) is not going to fight to defend us because we are ... designated as fascists and anti-Semitic."