How Russia's Young People are getting into Politics

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

This morning Peter Finn reports in the Washington Post on an interesting and innovative project in Russia designed to involve young people in national politics. It is called "Political Factory", and is patterned after the popular Russian Television reality show "Star Factory". In April, the Supreme Council of United Russia, the ruling party of President Vladimir Putin, decided that 20% of all candidates on party lists in future elections must be between the ages of 21 and 28. Finn reports on the selection process in Lipetsk, one of the nine regions of Russia that will be holding local parliamentary elections this fall.

In Lipetsk, as a method to select suitable candidates, Young Guard, the party's youth wing, devised the reality contest "Political Factory" open to all comers. The elimination process is designed with the stated goal is to discover young people who have a strong desire to participate in government and who show qualities of leadership. Party members or those expressing favored ideologies apparently do not have an advantage. The first step is for interested persons go the local party office and fill out a lengthy questionnaire. (Copies of all the questionnaires were supplied to the Washington Post.) The candidates also make a 45 second video recording on why they want to be a member of parliament and this is followed up with a telephone interview. The 20 winners of this round were announced at a beach party where each had a chance to express his or her view of party, Russia, and democracy. During the next month, each winner will be required to obtain signatures from 500 people who will support his or her candidacy. Judges are members of Young Guard as well as other young people. From these 20 winners, 5 will be selected whose names will be added to the party's list of candidates. Three of these very likely will become members of parliament.

It will be interesting to see how this works out. It would be exciting to see such a process taking place in America, but to try to envision this is difficult, so long as party politics are so controlled at the top and with money granted the same rights of free speech as ordinary citizens. The problem with this is that the money speaks so loud the voices of the people, especially young people, cannot be heard.