FORMER MOSCOW mayor Yuri Luzhkov left the leading United Russia party yesterday, following his dramatic dismissal by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev earlier in the day.
Mr Medvedev published a decree on the Kremlin website, which came into effect immediately citing “a loss of confidence” in Mr Luzhkov’s abilities and naming one of his deputies, Vladimir Resin, as acting mayor.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported yesterday afternoon that Mr Luzhkov had already left the ruling United Russia Party, which backs Mr Medvedev and is headed by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin. “Yury Luzhkov has appealed to the United Russia party’s high committee asking to leave,” a mayoral spokesman said.
Mr Luzhkov, who had served as head of the capital for more than 18 years, was defiantly claiming he would remain in power as late as Monday. This was despite speculation that it was just a matter of time before the colourful leader would announce his resignation or be dismissed.
A media campaign against the mayor was launched earlier this month, with major television channels running lurid documentaries about corruption linked to Mr Luzhkov and his wife, Yelena Baturina, whose business interests have made her Russia’s richest woman. Mr Luzhkov’s failure to return from his summer holiday to smog-covered Moscow also fuelled the campaign against him.
Commentators and the media are now speculating on who will be his permanent replacement, with Mr Resin not the only one in the running. Various local sources have also nominated Yuri Roslyak, another of Mr Luzhkov’s deputies, as a front runner, as well as deputy prime ministers Sergey Sobyanin, Igor Shuvalov and Sergey Ivanov. Long-serving emergencies minister Sergey Shoigu is also being touted as a possible replacement, alongside Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the controversial leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and businessmen Alexander Lebedev and Roman Abramovich.
As Muscovites wait to hear who their new mayor will be, many are reflecting on Mr Luzhkov’s time at the helm, as well as the nature of his dismissal. Tatiana Manykina, a Muscovite in her early 30s who works for a Holocaust foundation, does not approve of the way he was ousted. “I wouldn’t say that I had a positive opinion of Luzhkov,” she said, “But I don’t like how they got rid of him, or what came beforehand, I mean what they did to him in the media.”
Ms Manykina admits that tales of wide-scale corruption come as no surprise to those living in the capital. “It’s just that before it was our normal system of government and now for some reason they’re presenting it as something bad.”
Moscow is not the only local administration in Russia to see the fall of a long-serving head in the last year. Other strong leaders who had been serving since the 1990s resigned in the Russian republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan and the Sverdlovsk region, strengthening central government’s control across the country.