Yukos ex-head 'could be rallying
figure'
By Neil Buckley in Moscow
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oil tycoon sentenced to nine years in jail last week,
could become a rallying figure for the liberal opposition and a bigger irritant to the
authorities from behind bars than he was as a businessman, Russian political analysts said
last week.
A poll by the Levada Centre, an opinion poll organisation, conducted
before the former chief of the Yukos oil company was convicted, found 8.3 per cent of
Russians said they would vote for him as president.
That is well behind the 30 per cent or more President Vladimir Putin
scores in Levada's monthly polls. But it would put him in the "chasing pack"
behind Mr Putin who generally score around 10 per cent. These include Yuri Luzhkov, mayor
of Moscow, Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the
nationalist.
Yuri Levada, head of the polling group said the figure was more a
protest vote over Mr Khodorkovsky's treatment - the case has widely been seen as a
politically motivated attack - than a reflection of popularity.
But Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Centre for the Study of
Elites at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Mr Khodorkovsky could become an opposition
symbol and rallying figure. Other oligarchs driven out of Russia by Mr Putin, including
Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Mr Khodorkovsky's former business associate
Leonid Nevzlin, would redouble efforts to bring about Ukrainian-style reform.
"Those who have already suffered at the hands of the authorities
want to take revenge ...and they are going to do it," she said. "They are going
to finance all those protest organisations and forces that are capable of bringing about
an orange revolution here."
She suggested Russia's fragmented opposition parties, which have failed
to unite because of squabbles among leaders, could rally round the former Yukos chief.
"Consolidation could happen in the name of Khodorkovsky, who has
been transformed from oligarch to martyr, who suffered in, but now stands outside, the
conflict between business and the authorities," Ms Kryshtanovskaya told a press
conference. "In their time, [Nelson] Mandela and [Yassir] Arafat played this role;
they sat in captivity and became banners for the opposition."
Mr Khodorkovsky has stopped short of expressing explicit political
ambitions, saying only that he would devote himself to building civil society in Russia.
“Financial Times”, June 6, 2005
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9f29e9c4-d627-11d9-8040-00000e2511c8.html
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