Election in Russia

Election in Russia

A Russian RouElection? Fair or Rigged!?!

Without a doubt, during Vladimir Putin's eight-year leadership, Russia has revitalised as a promising world power with stable political situations, a prosperous economy and confident citizens other than a country facing social, economic and political collapse at the end of the 1990s. Putin, during whose time, real wages have tripled and unemployment has fallen rapidly, therefore is widely popular amongst the people. The amicable state of the nation has now equipped the Russians with a desire to look forward to the future with greater optimism and confidence than at any time over the past two decades.

Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor, won 70.23% of the vote on Sunday, with nearly all votes counted. As Putin's anointed heir, 42-year-old Medvedev was soon in the spotlight after the incumbent president publicly announced that he supported Medvedev's candidacy at the end of last year. Various opinion polls showed that the ruling party's candidate will win between 60 and 80 percent of the vote.

However, the Western media is against Medvedev’s win, claiming that the election was not free and fair. The propaganda could be a repercussion of Putin’s stance against the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and many other controversial US policies. The situation would be apparent to anyone, who followed the election buildup to the current state.

Earlier, other news agency reports stated that an important factor that might guarantee Medvedev's victory is the lack of competitive opponent. Online bloggers frequently commented that: a huge gap exists between Medvedev and the other three candidates in the percentage of support, which shows most Russian people approve of what Putin has done in office. Rightly so, since Putin said, earlier this month, that his ultimate goal, is to turn Russia into the world's No. 5 economy by 2020.

Medvedev, on the other hand, is a former law professor was nominated by United Russia, the biggest party in the parliament. Armed with a degree from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987 along with a doctorate in private law from the same university in 1990, he has served as Deputy head of Russia's government administration, Chairman of the board of directors at the state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, and has served as deputy head of the presidential administration over the past few years.

Besides these experiences, since November 2005, Medvedev has been serving as the first deputy prime minister in charge of the national priority projects in demography, education, health care, agriculture, and housing construction. It was through his speeches in 2008, when Medvedev pledged to follow Putin's set political strategies and further Russia's economic growth and prosperity, along with enhancing human rights, freedom of expression, reforms in the judicial system while separating it from the executive and legislative branches, did he come full-circle by gaining significant Russian confidence.

When Putin announced that Medvedev was his favored candidate for president on December 10 last year, the next day Medvedev returned the favor by announcing that he wanted Putin to become his prime minister. The Russians appreciated the synergy, between the two, through their votes.
However, Andreas Gross, whose team - a 22-member delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)- was the only Western observer mission in Russia, said candidates had been denied equal access to the media, and registration procedures made it hard for independents to stand. ‘The result of the Presidential elections held on March 2, 2008 in the Russian Federation is a reflection of the will of an electorate whose democratic potential was, unfortunately, not tapped,’ said Gross, soon after the election.
However, according to the PACE website, this election repeated most of the flaws revealed during the Duma elections of December 2007. They were highlighted as ‘failings’ by the PACE pre-electoral mission that was in Russia on February 7 and 8, 2008. None of the concerns of the pre-electoral mission were dealt with ahead of the March 2 vote. Candidate registration concerns could not have been accommodated, putting into question, the degree of how free the election was. Equal access of the candidates to the media and the public sphere in general has not improved, putting into question the fairness of the election.

Despite the minor frictions, the Western media has already picked on the election as being ‘influenced’. A plethora of news agencies, print media and organisations like CNN, BBC, the Guardian and others did not bat an eyelid to qualify the election as ‘rigged’, ‘influenced’, ‘unfair’ and ‘the least democratic’.

The delegation still concluded that the voting was well administered. The parliamentarians stressed that for an election to be good, it takes a good process, not just a good election day. Nonetheless, the delegation felt that even if those concerns had been addressed, the outcome of the vote – amounting, in effect, to a vote of confidence in the incumbent President – would have been the same.

The PACE delegation also deplored the absence in the field of its traditional election observation partners, notably long-term observers from the OSCE/ODIHR. However, in this particular case, the delegation was confident that it was able to complete its task efficiently and credibly. The delegation calls on the President-elect, as one of his first acts, to have sufficient confidence in his own country and its democracy to declare his intention to welcome in future a much larger representation of official observers over a longer period of time.

-compiled and written by Faizul Khan Tanim