| Chubais: facing stiff competition from Boris Berezovsky to be the most hated man in Russia |
Anatoly Chubais, CEO of energy company RAO UES, is planning a return to politics in the forthcoming Duma elections in Russia. As Boris Yeltsin’s deputy prime minister in the 1990s, Chubais was responsible for many of the government’s most controversial policies.
These included the loan-for-shares privatization programme, which enriched a handful of oligarchs such as Yukos CEO Mikhail Khordorkovsky and exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky. Chubais also persuaded Yeltsin not to dissolve the Duma and halt democracy in 1996. As he put it modestly at a recent political rally: “In all those years, there was no reform except ours. There were no ideas except ours.”
Chubais is standing for the SPS party, or Union of Right Forces, which is led by Irina Khakamada and Boris Nemtsoy. He will not stand down from his UES job if he is elected. He told an SPS rally last month: “Now we have in front of us a political fight, or a good scrap… I could not miss such an event. I cannot deny myself such pleasure.”
Most polls predict SPS is heading for a decrease in its present 7% share of Duma seats, as is its liberal rival, Yabloko. Both parties have been hit by the anti-oligarch campaign waged by the Kremlin in recent weeks, as well as by their own feud with each other. Chubais in particular is associated in the public’s mind with the enrichment of the oligarchs. At a press conference in the UK earlier this year, he was asked how it felt to be the most hated man in Russia, at which Boris Berezovsky piped up from the back of the room, saying: “No that’s me!”
