Electionblog
This weblog follows all the important elections in the region with personal stories of participants and observers.
Archive November 2007
Fri 30 Nov 2007 - Putin 's Plan? III scenario's
What will Putin do after United Russia wins the elections? Three scenarios are being discussed now: First, chances are that Putin will use loopholes in the Russian constitution to allow him to take on another term as president. Sergey Mironov, Federation Council Speaker and the leader of the pro-presidential party Free Russia, promotes a third term for Putin at the same time as he is running his own campaign. The so-called Za Putina (For Putin) movements also seem to spread across Russia at this moment. These movements propose that Putin should take on a third term or should occupy the special status of “The Leader of the Nation”.
The second rumor holds that Putin will become “The Leader of the Nation”, an extra-constitutional entity that would allow him to survey the coming presidents and ensure the continuity of “Putin’s Plan”.
The third, and in my opinion the most likely scenario, is that Putin becomes prime minister and will lead a majority in the State Duma. This will allow him to influence politics with a strong base of support; both from inside of the Duma, and maybe from the Za Putina movements and pro-Putin youth movements in society. Putin will not take on a third term as Russia’s President; because in that case he would break with the constitution he always fiercely defended.
Another mounting problem is the absence of international observers, as the OSCE announced that it would not send any observers at all after the denial of visas by Russian authorities. The rumors of electoral fraud are growing. An anonymous official stated that state officials and students are forced to vote for United Russia and they have to encourage others to do so as well. They face sanctions or expulsion from university if they fail to vote for the party, the state official said. The nonattendance of observers and the tactics of United Russia to gather the bulk of the votes definitely fuel the possibility of the rigging of the parliamentary elections.
In Russia political parties gather around United Russia and Vladimir Putin and state functionaries express their support for the president. No real alternative is available to United Russia. Most democratic parties will not make it across the 7 percent barrier which guarantees seats in the parliament. Public gatherings are firmly put to silence. In this situation parties don’t compete and it is unclear whether they support their own party or another. Not one party will win these elections, but one man only: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Posted by Freek van der Vet, Intern Dutch Institute St. Petersburg on 30-11-2007 - 13:41:28 Reactions: 0
Fri 30 Nov 2007 - Putin's Plan? II
Putin's “Plan” will have success. The polls show that Putin's United Russia will win the elections and get 60-80 percent of the seats in the parliament, even though the party of power refrained to participate in election debates. This leaves the other participating parties - among which the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), the Communist Party of Russia (KPRF), the Democratic Party Yabloko and Spravedlivaya Rossiya (Free Russia, SR) are the most important – to participate in television debates and fight among themselves. United Russia still captures most of the television time and it dominates the streets with advertise campaigns. The LDPR is expected to finish second with about 10 percent of the votes, the same as the Communistic Party. The Democratic Party Yabloko will probably fail to pass the 7 percent barrier of electoral participation with an expectation of 1-3 percent of the votes. But a poll of the All-Russia’s Centre of Public Opinion Study predicted that United Russia would be the only party which gathers enough votes for the State Duma.
The citizens of St. Petersburg I have spoken to have said to be fed up with these massive waves of propaganda, or agitatsiya. Russian politics are widely discussed in the kitchens of Russian families. They often make a comparison between nowadays propaganda and the one from the Soviet Union. While most people seem to have had enough propaganda on their doorsteps - including additional counter agitation pamphlets against some political parties in their mailbox - the ratings of United Russia do not seem to falter too much and United Russia and Russia’s President dominate the television screen.
Putin remains a firm speaker. In a speech to 5000 supporters – mostly young members of pro-Kremlin movements Nashi and Molodye Gvardia - on the 22nd of November, Putin played the “international influence” card. There is nothing that causes more tumult in Russia today as the meddling of western sponsors to civil movements and political parties. Putin accused his opponents of deliberately obstructing his plans and victory. “…They’re going to take to the streets. They have learned from Western experts and have received some training in neighboring republics. And now they are going to stage provocations here.” A television documentary on the 25th of November about the “colored revolutions” in Georgia, Serbia and Ukraine, backs his story up: a western conspiracy is behind these revolutions, and now it should be Russia’s turn. But a Russian revolution is most unlikely.
Putin also puts Russians to the spot and makes them choose between the economic turmoil during the privatization in the 90’s and his own established plan that promises stability. Putin remains popular because of the stable economic growth he brought after the hyperinflation and enrichment of a small elite in the nineties. Putin claimed that “If these gentlemen come back to power, they will again cheat people…they want to restore an oligarchic regime”.
But who are these mysterious “gentlemen”? One of these unidentified “gentlemen” may be Democratic Party Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky or SPS leader Nikita Belykh. Yabloko has led a complicated life in the last year. It was banned from the city elections in St. Petersburg, and now it campaigns with no substantial financial resources at all against the giant United Russia. Yavlinsky and his party made a new program called “Seven Steps to Equality”. Yabloko remains one of the only parties who builds a strong program and tries to explain it to Russia’s citizens. The SPS (Union of Right Forces) and its leader Nikita Belykh received growing critique from United Russia and Vladimir Putin too.
Or maybe one of these “gentlemen” is ex-chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is now laurelled in the west as one of Russia’s neo-dissidents. Or maybe it is his accomplice and popular writer Eduard Limonov who leads the National Bolshevik Party, a rebellious movement famous for its radical actions? Together these two gentlemen have organized public mass demonstrations in a coalition movement The Other Russia. On the 24th of November Kasparov was arrested and imprisoned during one of these protests. In St. Petersburg members of Yabloko were arrested during a peaceful protest in the centre of the city.
Are any of these gentlemen really a threat to United Russia backed up by a famous President? I think not. The following and most important question is: what will Putin do after United Russia wins the elections?
Posted by Freek van der Vet, Intern Dutch Institute St. Petersburg on 30-11-2007 - 13:08:12 Reactions: 0
Fri 30 Nov 2007 - Putin’s Plan? I
President Vladimir Putin decided to head the party list of government party Edinaya Rossiya (United Russia) for the parliamentary elections on 2 December 2007. With the result of the parliamentary elections as a foregone conclusion, Putin will most likely become Russia’s next prime-minister and lead a majority in the State Duma. His party does not need to be afraid of any resistance from other parties which lack funds. United Russia has vast financial resources for its campaign and an overwhelming support from the citizens of Russia supported by a newly established Za Putina (For Putin) movement. The movement argues for a third term for Putin as President. Even other parties are rallying people to vote for “Putin’s Party”, as it is called now. These parliamentary elections don’t seem to be about the struggles between political parties, but about one person and party only: Vladimir Putin and United Russia. United Russia doesn’t campaign with a program, but with a “man with a plan”: Putin’s Plan. But what will happen after Putin wins the parliamentary elections together with United Russia? And what does his plan envision, what do the slogans say?
The slogans say surprisingly little. As I walk through the streets I can see white banners flap in the wind above roads. They bear an overly optimistic text: “Putin’s Plan is the Victory of Russia” and “In Putin’s Plan is a Strong St. Petersburg”, but also simply “I, You, We”. This plan of Vladimir Putin is, however, left unexplained in the propaganda material. Edinaya Rossiya doesn’t campaign with ideas, but with simple slogans and a president who is still popular among most Russians. Putin ensured a stable economic growth for his country during his time as president, mainly due to export of raw materials and favorable oil prices. He was able to lift the international status of Russia. In his current campaign, he offers Russians a quite limited choice: it is either continued “stability” or “chaos” and a financial crisis as happened in the nineties.
It is evident that the party will win when you walk through the streets of St. Petersburg; there is no larger agitation campaign then United Russia’s. The campaign is so overwhelming that it leaves little place for common commercial posters. It makes me feel that I am walking in a “Soviet Union-look-alike” propaganda scenery where all people should gather around one leader and party. The atmosphere here is quite surreal. Putin is on TV for most of the time and information on other parties is limited to small television blocs between the programs and to late night programs.
This wave of propaganda has a well-know name in Russia: adminresurs, or administrative resource; the use of administrative and financial state resources during elections. Another form of administrative resource is the support Putin recently received from local government structures. The City Parliament of St. Petersburg formed a statement that asks citizens “to unite around Vladimir Putin”. The statement comes as a surprise as it is forbidden for city and federal government structures to participate in campaigning before elections. Other government officials seem to have followed the example of Putin. St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko also campaigns for United Russia today. The campaign is fixed on a single idea: Putin achieved stability, so we should support him now.
Posted by Freek van der Vet, Intern Dutch Institute St. Petersburg on 30-11-2007 - 13:07:14 Reactions: 0
Fri 16 Nov 2007 - Tossing a Coin: Anticipating Election Results in Kosovo
Landing in Kosovo barely a week ago was as exciting as always: just as we were descending into Prishtina airport, there was a power cut and the entire city disappeared below us. Some of the passengers, members of the so-called ‘international community’ most likely working in Kosovo, burst out in laughter. I assume the Kosovars on the flight found little comfort in the fact that some people found their energy problems amusing.
Central Election Commission and OSCE
The 2007 elections scheduled for November 17 were announced by the Secretary General’s Special Representative (SRSG) Joachim Rücker remarkably late, on August 31. This left less than three months for the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the OSCE to organize the elections. Political parties, on the other hand, have been demanding elections to take place, so some of them had already started campaigning months before. In a few days’ time, citizens of Kosovo will be electing representatives for their National Assembly, Municipal Assemblies, and will also for the first time directly elect their mayors.
Major political parties have entered into an agreement with SRSG to remove the issue of status from their campaigning in the upcoming elections. Though a definite improvement from previous elections when the future status of Kosovo was the only issue on the table, and whose outcome all major Albanian parties essentially agreed upon, at the moment the status question is pretty much like an elephant in the room, without anyone talking about it.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere in Prishtina does not really reflect what one would expect from a capital city a week prior to elections. Aside from the large number of posters and billboards plastered all around the city, there is little indication of rallies, info stands, or public outreach of political parties. The part of the population most excited about the upcoming elections are the international institutions busy with its organization: OSCE, in cooperation with local Electoral Commission, and the several hundred observers from Council of Europe flown in especially for the occasion. This is also the first time that CEC is in charge of elections organization, with OSCE taking an advisory role, so it is a test of local capacity in this democratic exercise.
Novelties
There are several novelties in this year’s elections. Although they were a major point of contention in the last elections, when OSCE and USAID were split over introducing open list voting versus maintaining the closed lists, in these elections open lists were introduced without dispute. They are expected to connect politicians better to their electorate, and to ensure higher transparency and more competition between different policies and programs that individuals are running on. In the previous elections, OSCE won the issue that time, and lists were kept closed, ballots fairly simple, and it was left to parties’ discretion to nominate their representatives to the Assembly based on percentage of votes gained in the elections. This time, however, lists are open, and politicians are running individualistic campaigns, trying to win votes on personal appeal. This in turn means more than a hundred names on the ballots, where voters are expected to circle ten of them. Major discussions are going on these days within CEC and OSCE concerning potential invalid ballots (those circling more than ten representatives, for example), and how to deal with them. It seems everyone expects the voter turnout to be remarkably low, less than 50%. Add to this the problem of invalid ballots, and you’ve give yourself a nice headache.
Kosovo's political scene
What are some of the changes on Kosovo’s political scene since the last elections? The leading party LDK has fractured and the new party born out of this divorce is Nekhat Daci-led LDD (Democratic League of Dardania). The split came as result of internal party voting on new leadership: last year’s LDK congress even ended in a shocking fist fight between the supporters of two contenders for the leadership position. Furthermore, it is somewhat surprising to see Ramush Haradinaj grace AAK posters throughout Kosovo, whilst knowing he is on trial in The Hague. PDK and ORA are still present and running in pretty much the same make-up as before. All have been actively campaigning for a few months now and rumors are flying that PDK has hired external foreign consultants for their campaign. A definite newcomer to the political scene is Behgjet Pacolli and his party New Kosovo Alliance (AKR). Pacolli is a Kosovo-born successful businessman who made a fortune abroad and his party capitalizes on his background: their program stresses employment and boosting the economy as the main necessity for Kosovo and their leader the main man to accomplish it.
Engage Kosovar citizens
Trying to engage Kosovar citizens in talking about elections is an almost futile exercise: no one seems to be interested in talking about them. A few that I spoke with openly admit that they do not plan to vote. When asked why, I get the answer: “All politicians are the same.” Though they are not talking about status now but about their party programs, these are still in their infancy: Kosovo political parties are far away from being mature, established, internally democratic and structured, and ideologically coherent parties. Party assistance they received in the last eight years has tried to steer them in the direction of defining themselves along ideological lines, to re-create the European political experience of having Social Democrat, Liberal, and Conservative parties. However, there is still no true left-right party system division in Kosovo, as all parties seem more or less centrist, playing it ‘safe.’
It is expected that Kosovo Serbs will not take part in these elections: the pressure from Belgrade instructs them to boycott expression of their political rights. If the dominant perception of many Albanians is that what’s on offer in these elections does not constitute rich choice or offer alternatives, the turnout will indeed be poor. Considering the six million € invested by the international community in its organization, and the round-the-clock work of its international staff on elections, low turnout would constitute a failure on the part of the international community and its efforts. However, as I’ve been told by some people, you never can tell with people here: they just might have a last minute change of hearts and show up to cast their ballots on Election Day. As with tossing a coin, these elections could go either way: the coin could land heads or tails. One should bear in mind that waiting for democracy around here is like waiting for Godot: the coin could also very well spin out of control or disappear forever in the ‘gutter.’
Posted by Maja Nenadovi, PhD student Universiteit van Amsterdam on 16-11-2007 - 11:18:02 Reactions: 0
