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Putin's Landslide
By Eric Margolis
12/05/07 "ICH" -- --- -As expected, Vladimir Putin’s United
Russia Party won a landslide victory in yesterday’s
parliamentary elections, garnering over 63% of the vote as of
this writing, which will give it 70% of the seats in the Duma,
or national assembly.
The Communist Party won only 11.6%. Its leader, Gennady Zuganov,
cried foul, claiming the elections were fraudulent, a pretty
rich accusation from the party that never held an honest vote in
its entire history.
Two other small parties that vote with Putin’s United Russia
gained about 15% of the vote. One of them is led by the Russian
neo-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Liberal, western-oriented
parties were shut out.
President Vladimir Putin’s earthy phrases seemed to have
captured Russia’s current muscular mood. Reacting to sharp
western criticism of Russia’s parliamentary elections, Putin,
playing "Vlad the Bad," warned western powers not to "poke their
snotty noses" in his nation’s business.
Putin, who has been increasingly outspoken of late, mocked
President George Bush’s double standard in accusing Russia of
dubious elections, squashing opposition, and roughing up
dissenters while ignoring similar behavior by US ally Georgia.
He could have also added other key US clients like Pakistan,
Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan.
The decision by the US-backed dictator of Pakistan, former Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, to exclude former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
from January elections made Washington’s rebuking of Moscow look
particularly two-faced.
President Putin was right to tell off western critics and limit
foreign observation of Russian elections. Russia is a great,
historic power, not some banana republic. If western observers
were really needed to supervise votes in Moscow, Omsk and
Kaluga, then why shouldn’t Russian observers supervise America’s
sometimes dodgy elections? For example, in Chicago, where the
dead routinely vote; in Florida, where blacks are turned away;
or Ohio where rigged voting machines gave Republicans victory in
2004 elections.
It would be better if we dropped the pretense that Russia
conducts free, fair, western-style elections. Elections under
former US protégé Boris Yeltsin were all rigged or voters
bought. Today, Russian opposition parties have almost no
funding, they are excluded from most media, which is largely
government controlled. Parties winning less than 7% of the vote
are excluded, and there is no independent electoral commission.
Sunday’s vote was really a referendum on President Putin’s
popularity. Most polls show him with 70–80% approval, making
Putin one of the world’s most successful and admired leaders.
Election returns confirmed this fact, particularly among young
Russians.
Former intelligence officer Putin and his KGB old boys network
have worked wonders for Russia. After a coup that ousted the
sick, besotted Yeltsin, Putin inherited a bankrupt, demoralized
nation subsisting on cash handouts from Washington. So low did
"Weimar" Russia sink, much of its advanced military technology
was sold to the US for large cash payoffs.
Thanks to tough management, nationalizations, and rising oil
prices caused in part by George Bush’s foolhardy invasion of
Iraq, Russia’s national income more than tripled under Putin,
and the ruble became a hard currency. Equally important, Putin
restored pride and sense of dignity to this fiercely
chauvinistic nation.
In the process, he centralized all power in the Kremlin, muzzled
the independent press, intimidated opponents, jailed oligarchs,
and created a cult of personality. He ruthlessly crushed the
life out of independence-seeking Chechnya, thrilling
Muslim-hating Russians by vowing to "kill the Chechen bandits in
their shithouses." Russians simply didn’t care about the
atrocities their soldiers and police committed against the
Chechen, whom they branded "terrorists," any more than Americans
cared about the vast suffering they inflicted on Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Most Russians couldn’t care less about the feeble little liberal
parties clamoring for western-style democracy. It’s a sad truism
that Russians want order, economic progress and national pride,
not democracy. Judo champion, abstemious Putin fits this bill
perfectly as the historic "white czar," a good, fatherly
autocrat who is strong, manly, and pure.
To most Russians, "democracy" is associated with the thieving
oligarchs who pillaged Russia’s industries and resources during
Yeltsin’s rule, and the ivory-tower economists who debauched
Russia’s currency, leaving millions of pensioners to starve.
Democracy is also seem by many Russians as a Trojan Horse the US
used to assert financial and political influence over Russia,
and later in Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia. Meanwhile,
President Bush’s policies of ordering NATO around the way the
Soviets treated the old Warsaw Pact, pushing NATO to Russia’s
western borders, and the daft scheme to emplace US ABM systems
in the Czech Republic and Poland enflamed Russia’s nationalist
passions and reignited its historic fears of western threats.
Putin says he wants to continue leading Russia. But he is
constitutionally banned from a third presidential term. So does
Putin plan to run Russia as an all-powerful prime minister? As
leader of his United Russia Party? Will he become a youthful
elder statesman? Or will he simply get the Duma to change the
constitution?
He may follow the example of Czar Ivan the Terrible, temporarily
withdrawing from public life until throngs of supplicants beg
him to return to Moscow as Czar.
Or he could just remain Citizen Vladimir Putin. The only formal
title the great Deng Xiaoping held when he so brilliantly ruled
China was Chairman of the Chinese Bridge Association. But no one
doubted for a second who ran China.
Whatever Putin’s near-term political plans, he clearly intends
to restore Russia’s role as a world power, and to challenge US
global domination. Russia’s withdrawal last week from the
European conventional arms treaty is the latest ominous sign.
President Putin wants to restore the old Soviet Union’s borders,
but minus the Communist Party, which has sunk miserably low
public support. Putin believes Russia’s vast energy and mineral
resources will eventually make it the world’s leading power.
Only 55 years old, Putin might even live to see this triumphant
day for Mother Russia.
December 4, 2007
Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National
Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See
his website. http://www.ericmargolis.com/
Copyright © 2007 Eric Margolis
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