Posted on 12/08/2003 5:11:21 AM PST by blanknoone
President Vladimir Putin took control of the Russian parliament last night, removing the last effective bastion of opposition to his rule and paving the way for him to assume Tsar-like power.
A sailor leaves a polling booth in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol Exit polls last night gave United Russia, the president's party, 37 per cent of the vote, the Communists 15 per cent and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats 12 per cent. Rodina, a new nationalist party, was predicted to have won nine per cent.
This would give Mr Putin's party and its allies about 58 per cent of the vote and return Russia to an era of single-party dominance after 12 years of vibrant, if corrupt, democracy.
With 11.33 per cent of the votes counted, United Russia had 36.3 per cent, the Liberal Democrats 14.8 per cent, the Communists 12.9 and Rodina 7.7 per cent.
Liberals predicted the election would come to be seen as a milestone on the country's slow regression towards Soviet-style authoritarianism.
United Russia is hoping that it might win a two-thirds majority in the new State Duma which would give it the power to change the constitution at will.
Rumours abound that Mr Putin, who is all but certain to win a second term in March next year, wants to scrap a clause limiting the president to two terms in office.
Officially the former KGB spy is above the fray and should not endorse United Russia, the party he created to support him four years ago. But, in an address 10 days ago, he said the election would determine "whether my hands and feet are tied, whether the president would be able to do his work or not".
In economic terms Russia is a robust and brash capitalist economy, which has embraced the principle of private ownership, but politically Mr Putin and his entourage now dominate the country.
Anna Pastukhova, an official with Memorial, a Russian human rights organisation, in the Urals town of Yekaterinburg, said: "We are moving back to a time of less freedom and democracy and more control. Our local governor, who is with United Russia, said that it is right we should have in this country one dominant party and a few small ones. What kind of a vision is that?"
The Communists, traditionally the country's largest parliamentary party, have been subjected to weeks of vicious attack on national and local television. The result has been that United Russia has surged ahead of them in recent weeks after level-pegging in the autumn.
Gennady Zyuganov, the veteran Communist leader, said: "The election campaign has been an evil farce. Formally the parliament will be elected but in fact it will be appointed by the presidential administration."
The first step in the reversal of Russian democracy came in 1993 when President Yeltsin stripped parliament of many of its powers, handing them to himself.
Since Mr Putin came to office in 2000 the process has been accelerated. Opposition-controlled media have been neutered and tycoons unwilling to toe the Kremlin line exiled or jailed. United Russia, invented by Mr Putin as a vehicle for his policies in the State Duma, has risen in importance.
Victory today will represent a remarkable achievement for a party that has no ideology and only the barest outline of a political platform.
Its identity is so amorphous that its campaign posters carry pictures of both Stalin and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the veteran Soviet-era dissident.
In the run-up to the elections, its leaders have refused to hold television debates, suggesting they were above such things.
Many United Russia supporters say they will back the party simply because it is already in power. One man, a driver, said he would vote for it because "they are the bosses".
Officially each party is limited to spending about £5 million on the election campaign but independent estimates say United Russia may have spent hundreds of millions.
Western observers say the slanted media coverage and incidents of gerrymandering mean this Russian election is the least democratic since Boris Yeltsin came to power.
"It's far worse than in 1999," one observer said. "We warned the government that they must stop the abuses but they don't care what we think."
As a result, the only two liberal parties presently in the Duma - Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces - may fail to achieve the five per cent needed for representation.
The only group of voters set to outstrip United Russia supporters are those who have become so alienated that they will not vote at all - as many as 40 per cent of Russia's 110 million eligible voters.
Polling was conducted amid tight security after a suicide bombing on a packed commuter train in Yessentuki in southern Russia claimed 42 lives on Friday. A man believed to have conspired in the attack was arrested yesterday. Chechen separatists are suspected of seeking to disrupt the election.
By contrast, it makes sense for Russians to absolutely reject any responsibility for Soviet rule and its mass murder and repression (especially of the Russians and Ukrainians) precisely because it was an a-historical process, a shock to the system which took place almost instantly, and an internationalist conspiracy led by people almost entirely NOT of Slavic-Russian heritage. In other words, even if the Soviet dictatorship had been the most benign rule in the world, it still was NOT an organic outgrowth of Russian history. It need not and would not have happened except for foreign funding e.g. from Imperial Germany.
I guess the analogy would be let's suppose a comet hits the United States and because of the shock to the system with massive death and disruption, there comes widespread dictatorship, murder, kidnapping, starvation, etc. (sort of like Communism). Would it be fair to accuse Americans of the post-disaster loss of civic values? What if a dictator drafted men in such an environment and invades Canada and Mexico and kills millions? I think you can at least see the analogy.
We can all pray to the Lord for healing of the horrors of the past century.
Sorelosermanovitch.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.