50 Europe The EconomistFebruary 10th 2018
2 opposition—aloof, out of touch and
spoiled. Even her election headquarters in
a fashionable loft behind Moscow’s Soho
Rooms, an exclusive nightclub of the
2000s, fits the stereotype. By encouraging
Ms Sobchak to run, the Kremlin hoped to
caricature the liberal opposition while
making the election look legitimate.
Like any caricature, this contains some
truth. The daughter ofthe late Anatoly
Sobchak, St Petersburg’s first democrati-
cally elected mayor, who was once Mr Pu-
tin’s mentor and boss, Ms Sobchak person-
ifies the post-Soviet elite. As a child, she
played with Mr Putin’sdaughters and was
guarded by Viktor Zolotov, later Mr Putin’s
bodyguard and now the chief of the Rus-
sian National Guard, an anti-riot force.
She published books on “how to marry
a millionaire” and turned her own life into
a reality show called “A Blonde in Choco-
late” (ie, living in luxury). “We had a
chance to live as in the West, we had beau-
tiful cars, beautiful offices, good jobs. We
dressed like Europeans, spoke languages
and travelled,” she says. Like many of the
Russian elite, she benefited from the slosh
of oil money, and voted for Mr Putin.
But in December 2011, as protests broke
out across Russia, she climbed onto a dif-
ferent stage in Moscow. “I am Ksenia Sob-
chak, and I have something to lose,” she
said. Hard-core protesters booed her, but
she stayed the course, displaying brains
and guts. Her participation made protests
fashionable and broadened her appeal.
Losses were not long in coming. State
TV channels froze her out. Masked police
burst into her flat in the small hours of the
morning, seizing cash worth €1.5m. Mr Pu-
tin soon turned his back on the Wester-
nised elite. They cared about Ferraris and
holidays in Monaco; he gave Russia wars
and international isolation.
Now Ms Sobchak’s aim, she says, is not
to win the election (she knows that is im-
possible) but to use it as an entry point into
politics to push the boundaries from with-
in. While the Kremlin is surely using her,
she is also using the Kremlin. Her access to
state airwaves has allowed her to talk
about Mr Navalny, criticise Mr Putin’s for-
eign policy and speak up for human rights.
On the day when Mr Navalny was de-
tained in Moscow for rallying supporters
to boycott the elections, she was in Chech-
nya, demanding the release of Oyub Titiev,
a human-rights activist who has been ar-
rested on dubious drug charges.
“In an authoritarian and repressive sys-
tem, you have to find a win-win situation
to get into politics,” she says. “A true politi-
cian needs to use any opportunity and in
the short term can negotiate with the devil
himself.” But though Ms Sobchak’s partici-
pation in the protests of 2011 and 2012
made them fashionable and helped ampli-
fy their message, her involvement in the
coming election seems to be having the op-posite effect. The hope that Ms Sobchak
would boost the liberal agenda has so far
been in vain. Instead, she has simply
created division.
Ms Sobchak may be a genuine liberal,
but by campaigning for unpopular causes,
such as being nice to gay people, reversing
the annexation of Crimea and evicting Le-
nin’s corpse from its mausoleum on Red
Square, she actually risks marginalising
liberalism. And by helping the Kremlin leg-
itimise the election, the danger is that she
may strengthen Mr Putin’s grip on power—
and make her version of Russia’s future
ever more fanciful. 7“W
HO?” was the reaction of many
Romanians when Viorica Dancila
became their third prime minister in just
seven months, on January 29th. That she is
the first woman to run the country’s gov-
ernment might have been cause for cele-
bration, if anyone thought she would real-
ly be doing the job. Few do. As soon as she
had been elected, she vanished into the of-
fice of Liviu Dragnea, the leader of her
party, the ruling Social Democrats (PSD). It
is Mr Dragnea who calls the shots. If Ms
Dancila proves unwilling or unable to do
what he wants, she will be dumped.
There is only one reason why Ms Dan-
cila is prime minister. A conviction for elec-
toral fraud prevents Mr Dragnea from tak-
ing the job himself. He is on trial for abuse
of office, and last November Romania’spowerful National Anti-Corruption Direc-
torate (DNA) indicted him for forming an
“organised criminal group” with the aim
of stealingEU funds. Mr Dragnea says he is
innocent, but if found guilty he is likely to
go to jail. That is, unless Ms Dancila can
push through a proposed package of judi-
cial reforms which would decriminalise
certain categories ofabuse of power and,
according to the weak and divided opposi-
tion, bring Romanian justice under politi-
cal control.
“Romania is starting to look like Poland
and Hungary,” says Dan Barna, the leader
of the Save Romania Union, an opposition
party. “It is not a matter of ideology, but a
bunch of guys with problems with the law,
so they want to change the law for them-
selves.” Five of Ms Dancila’s cabinet have
been or are being investigated for corrup-
tion. The formerPSD mayor of Constanta,
charged by the DNA with corruption, says
he is applying for political asylum in Mada-
gascar. Mr Dragnea is one of a group of Ro-
manian politicians and businessmen who
regularly holiday together in a Brazilian re-
sort. In 2015 Costel Comana, another of the
group and a formerbusiness partner of Mr
Dragnea, committed suicide in an aero-
plane toilet when two of his associates
were arrested.
The EU backed the creation of indepen-
dent instruments to tackle Romania’s cor-
ruption problem. One result was the DNA.
Few, though, expected that it would be so
successful. It has dispatched hundreds of
high-profile people to jail. In the past five
years they have included a prime minister,
five ministers and 25 members of parlia-
ment. Many more are on trial. But now pro-
posals for “justice reform” include banning
the use of recordings at trials, which
would, says Vlad Voiculescu, a former
minister, mean “the end of the DNA as we
know it”.
Before he came to lead the PSD Mr Drag-
nea was a local baron, in charge of his
party in his native province of Teleorman.
Now he is king of the barons and must
keep them happy. In Alexandria, Teleor-
man’s capital, the PSD mayor, Victor Dragu-
sin, says his leader is doing a fine job. It is
just a shame, he thinks, that the party has
made such a hash of explainingits pro-
posed justice reforms. They will improve
the delivery ofjustice, he reckons—and
points to the case of Adrian Nastase, a for-
mer prime minister jailed “without evi-
dence” to make an “example of him”. Poli-
ticians from the PSD frequently complain
that the DNA is politically motivated, and
part of a “parallel state” that includes ele-
ments of the intelligence services.
In Alexandria, Mr Dragusin shows off a
new sports hall and work on university
buildings. He says he wants more money
from Bucharest and from the EU. Ms Dan-
cila needs to deliver, or she could swiftly
follow her predecessors into oblivion. 7RomaniaNobbling the
nobblers
BUCHAREST
Attempts to undermine an
anti-corruption force