~If elections were fair, how did Putin get 99.48% of the vote with 99.5% turnout in Chechnya in 2011?
That’s impossible, unless Chechens really do love Putin after all.~
I agree with you on this one. It was quite ugly in Chechnya but Chechnya is not all of Russia.
So you think Putin cheated on a massive scale in Chechnya, but was clean as a whistle in the rest of Russia? Let’s be real here, why would he cheat there and conduct a fair election everywhere else?
Reality check. Putin got 85%+ in Dagestan as well, and every place where there were no independent monitor drive Putin won on a massive scale.
To be honest, Putin probably would have won a fair election anyways, although by an embarrassingly more lacklustre result than what Putin supposedly won the election by. But only because he has successfully and systematically eliminated any real challengers to his rule.
I mean, who else are Russians going to vote for? That old Communist? The other guys who vote in lockstep with Putin? Ironically the old commie is probably more independent than the so called liberals that Putin runs against.
Might as well keep the man who stopped the boat leaking (Putin) than to throw him overboard for his many crimes and risk losing the fight or much, much, worse; a return to the instability of the 1990’s.