We all know what it is: former President and former Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin has been re-elected. He is once again the President. Can't say he is once again the Boss as he always was despite the misplaced hopes for Medvedev asserting himself expressed by the odd Western analyst. Putin's teddy bear had no power base - how could he have possibly asserted himself.
The result, given that no genuine oppositionist was allowed to register as a candidate and the two leading opponents were the perennial leaders of the Communist and the nationalist Liberal-Democrat parties were not what one might call overwhelming. On a turn-out of around 63 per cent Putin is supposed to have secured 64 per cent of the vote on official figures, which are being disputed with a good deal of filmed and otherwise described evidence of blatant vote rigging.
Tens of thousands of people have been demonstrating in Moscow under the very watchful eyes of the security services. Several hundred were arrested including the leaders Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov. Another fifty or so were arrested in St Petersburg. All seem to have been released and the cases will be handed over to civilian courts.
Further developments will be watched with interest but it seems that what annoys people more than anything is the shamelessness of the fraud and of the shenanigans, the contemptuous rejection of all criticism and complaints. It seems that President Putin does not care whether his support is on the wane or not. That is not a very sensible way to behave as the slightest knowledge of Russian history would tell him.
How does Russian democracy compare with ours?
ReplyDeleteThey have only one real choice for national leader, we have two, but it's difficult to tell the difference between them. Electoral fraud, well try Tower Hamlets, or the Asian infested midlands. If Putin shows indifference our whole political class has the same characteristics only they disguise it with apparent consultations, inquiries, commissions and a multitude of obfuscations.
Same same.
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ReplyDeleteJust as soon as I work out how to do it, I shall delete that second comment as I do not like advertising in the comments section.
ReplyDeleteThe West is extremely critical of Russia. I guess that election monitors would find huge corruption in our culturally enriched areas and, as for the American primaries - well, the mind boggles! With democracy increasingly extinguished in Europe as a whole, we are not really in a position to criticise.
ReplyDeleteJohn Laughland made some interesting comments on Russia Today. People had voted for stability but the generations which remembered communism and those who remembered the national and economic destruction of the Nineties were still numerous enough to carry the vote for stability .
With the threat of Islam to the East and of a "forward" American and European policy in the West, it is not surprising that Putin - or any Russian - government should be decidedly suspicious of the outside world and of the support it gives to destabilising activities by foreign-funded human rights movements.
The "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia were so obviously set up to match a Western-style public relations template that they could not be mistaken for anything but proxies of Western powers, who are also planning missile defences close to Russia's border. It would be interesting to see what the USA's response would be to something similar, but backed by Russia, in Mexico, for example.
That's democracy for you, mind you he is not too good at it, as I recall did not that nice Mr. Stalin get 99% on a regular basis. The president needs some practice!
ReplyDeleteLike Venezuela or Cuba you mean?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, you need to learn more about missile defense to understand why putting <u>mid-course</u> interceptors close to the border of Russia is obviously no threat to the Russian deterrent.
America and Britain are no more democratic than Russia in fact considerably less so. The issue of media control is fundamentally the same. In both America and in Britain the media is under the absolute domination of the Left and the neocons, two sides of the same pro-globalist coin. If virtually no airtime is given to opponents of the regime i.e. traditional conservatives and socialists, neither country can be called democratic except in the sense that they hold ‘elections’. Moreovoer totalitarian speech controls are nothing like as severe in Russia as they are in most of Western Europe where people are routinely prosecuted, jailed, fined or lose their livelihoods for uttering heretical opinions on race and immigration or questioning certain historical events. There are more political prisoners in Germany today than in Russia but you wouldn’t know it reading MSM propaganda.
ReplyDeleteI think it was around 98.4%, Derek but I completely agree. Mr Putin is just not in the same league.
ReplyDeleteI think the notion that there can be no opposition in any of the former Soviet states except as Western templates set up by Western agencies is an insult to the people of those countries, Edward. Also AKM is right about missile defence.