BORIS KAGARLITSKY, MOSCOW
THE VOTE IS OVER, FORGET ABOUT IT!
The Central Election Commission has counted the vote returns – the parties that were meant to make it into the State Duma are already there occupying their places. Accuracy of the forecast given before the election by the Kremlin-friendly experts, keeps one guessing if the whole costly procedure was aimed at implementing into life a cooked-up scheme. The fake scheme has little to do with real life, but the bureaucrats’ heated imagination will bring this monster into life… into our life.
The journalists exert themselves in vain trying to find a story. For example, the other day an executive of an acclaimed electronic resource spent half an hour trying to get my comment on the election results, in particular she asked if I was going to make a report. I was not, I told her, as there was nothing to write about, but I had been monitoring the situation. And should the results of the monitoring be revelatory, I would make them public. In a couple of days I was quite surprised to learn from that very resource that I was going to write the report. What about, I wonder.
Opposition didn’t line up to challenge the election results. Only the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and the Communists (CPRF) pleaded improper ballot procedures. But even those accusations were aimed squarely at those parties’ voters who were waiting for explanations for yet another fiasco. Besides, both CPRF and SPS perfectly understand that under the circumstances being at law with the authorities is time-wasting and can lead to wasting the remains of political influence, for the authorities control the courts, which is no news, and have the evidence against the opposition – SPS bribed voters, CPRF distributed not registered newspapers, plus had illegal financing. Obviously those tactical mistakes are due to legal ignorance of the CPRF members not to their wicked design. Anyway the violations were massive enough to keep the parties away from the courts. All the more that it is difficult to prove falsifications and relatively easy to provide evidence of technical violations.
The United Russia is far from being impeccable either. Take the Caucasian republics or the republic of Mordovia – they didn’t take pains to count votes, they just declared that the president-backed party won with a landslide. In all regions, including Moscow, local authorities put pressure upon the citizens making them support the United Russia. However, some of those coerced to come to the polling place “voted out of spite” for LDPR or CPRF – yet, those were rare cases.
It all was quite predictable. Are you at home with Latin mottoes? I tell you: quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi – with, say, United Russia's Gryzlov as Jupiter and CPRF's Zyuganov as a bull.
Right after the election, blogs were invaded by the information that the administrative resource had been activated to raise the percent of the Just Russia party. According to the monitoring of the FairGame group in 2003, at the level of regional election commissions votes must have been transferred from outsiders to the winners. The Yabloko party got by 2 percent less than in 2003, though their electorate is quite stable. At the same time the Just Russia lacked before the election those 2 percent to make it into the State Duma. The conclusion stares you in the face, doesn’t it?
But this time there was no comprehensive monitoring, like the one organized in 2003 by the FairGame, so we can keep all our conclusions to ourselves, for there is no open statistical data to confirm or dispel them.
The official election results stay in-between reality and science fiction. Given the present political situation, it is not important if 63 or only 58.7 percent of citizens have really supported the United Russia, as well as if the Just Russia has made it in the Parliament with the help – it all has little political significance anyway. According to Russia’s home-grown criteria, the election was quite fair.
As you might know, highest wisdom of an administrator consists in proper selection of cadres. The main task for the President’s team was to properly select actors and integrate them into political process. All the rest was the black box of Russia’s politics.
The opposition leaders found themselves in the position of the people who sat down to play with a card-sharper and were ready to lose. Still, they are more or less satisfied with that outcome, because they make part of the system that grants them stability and protects from genuine oppositional forces.
Frankly speaking, the purport of the recent legislative elections escapes my understanding. They incessantly repeat that it was a referendum legitimating Putin’s policy. Will they precise to what policies, programs and actions Putin is going to apply this legitimacy?
Do you happen to know what the "Putin’s Plan" is? I don’t. Does Putin know? I strongly doubt.
Legitimating an outgoing politician utterly lacks political sense. Or was it expressing gratitude to the President that is about to leave his post. Vote of confidence is something that a new President will need soon.
Does President Putin deserve a parting present? Fine, but it is no longer a political issue!
The United Russia was going to take a two-week break after the triumph at the legislative election and before giving out the name of Putin's successor.
Meanwhile the country has got used to waiting. We have been waiting for about two long years – two weeks is nothing in comparison to that. But surprise, surprise! Something must have gone wrong in the Kremlin: the United Russia together with the Just Russia named their candidate. The script writers added to the list of Dmitry Medvedev’s supporters the Agrarians and the Civil Force party.
I cannot imagine why they left out CPRF, that could perfectly complement the team.
The marketing principle “Buy one, get one free!” works perfectly in Russia’s politics – we elect the lawmakers and get a new President as a bonus.
Cheer ran down the line of the Kremlin-friendly commentators, stock performance improved, even the Western observers expressed their distant approval. A liberal politician Medvedev has suddenly been acclaimed as a responsible politician and a determined successor of Putin’s policy.
How can we know Medvedev’s true feeling about his own appointment? I see him as a man who was granted the keys from the storehouse before the great inspection. But maybe, I am wrong this time – history is a very strict inspector but the one that usually comes late.
The only person who could be perfectly satisfied with the current situation is Putin himself. But alas, the bureaucrats intend to leave him in power for another four years as Prime Minister. Well, it’s not fair, for hasn’t he perfectly earned his parting present?!
Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements
December 17, 2007
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