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Russian drivers launch fight to improve roads and halt corruption

Tony Halpin in Moscow

They endure awful roads and corrupt police, and their cars are the butt of jokes the world over. Now Russia’s drivers are gearing up to fight for their rights.

The Federation of Russian Car Owners says that its mass movement is to put up candidates in regional elections and pressurise political parties to court them for support nationally.

Politicians may have reason to fear a backlash from motorists who resent the privileges enjoyed by the post-communist elite flaunting their wealth in luxury cars.

Analysts say that President Medvedev may quietly back the group as he seeks to open up the political system to greater competition. Mr Medvedev may also decide it is better to be with the drivers than against them. There were street protests in a dozen cities last December when the Government sought to raise import duties on foreign cars.

The Kremlin was forced to send riot police from Moscow to Vladivostok, 5,750 miles (9,250km) to the east, amid fears that local officers would refuse to stop the protests.

United Russia withdrew the increase when Sergei Naryshkin, the chief of staff, complained that it had ignored opposition from “Russian citizens, car enthusiasts, professional drivers and public organisations”. The car owners’ group had submitted petitions with 80,000 signatures against the increase.

Sergei Kanayev, the head of the group’s Moscow branch, said that the campaign had convinced the loose alliance of activists to register as a public movement. This would entitle it to place candidates on the electoral lists of parties in regional elections and to campaign for those who backed its demands.

The Communist Party in Novosibirsk and the St Petersburg branch of Fair Russia have already offered places on their party lists.

“This organisation of car owners is not a weak force and they have a chance in the elections,” Oleg Nilov, the head of the Fair Russia branch in St Petersburg, told the Baltinfo news agency.

Mr Kanayev said that the group wanted the cost of car insurance to be reduced, taxes on petrol lowered, road safety improved and corruption stopped.

Traffic accidents in Russia kill 30,000 people a year. The observation by the 19th-century writer Nikolai Gogol that fools and bad roads were Russia’s two greatest misfortunes still holds true.

Igor Levitin, the Transport Minister, said in 2006 that two thirds of highways and three quarters of regional roads failed to meet operational standards.

The biggest demonstration by drivers was in that year, when Oleg Shcherbinsky was freed a month after nationwide protests against his imprisonment.

A judge had jailed him for four years after ruling that he should have moved when a Mercedes with flashing blue lights drove up behind his Toyota at 90mph (145km/h). The governor of the Altay region and his driver were killed when their Mercedes clipped Mr Shcherbinsky’s car and hit a tree.