December 4, 2011, was the day of Russia’s national elections to the State Duma (Parliament), and although the final results will take some more time to be tallied, the general picture is by now very clear… At least to those of us who can see the whole picture.
The dominant Putin-Medvedev party United Russia is currently balancing on the tightrope of 50%, which is a very significant drop indeed, since the last Duma elections, in 2007, when the party received 64.3% of the total vote. Thus, in purely numerical measures the “Putin Party” did lose some ground.
But what does this drop really signify? As I am writing this, there’s plenty of gloating in the West about Mr. Putin’s alleged debacle, and Russia’s pro-American oppositionists are ecstatic about it, although very angry about the reported incidents of rigged elections in different localities of the country. Judging from the news reports spread throughout the Western world, Russia is again on the unstoppable march toward an America-friendly pro-capitalist democracy, defying a clique of some Soviet-era leftovers and KGB apparatchiks who are desperately trying to put a wrench in the progressive clockwork of history.
I pity those Western news audiences who may have received this news with a straight face and believed it. It is therefore important to put certain basic facts in proper perspective, which is the purpose of this posting.
…Although there is an eerie similarity here with certain recent events clustered together under the caption “Arab Spring,” where the democratic genie let out of the bottle, with the full complicity of the West, brings forth with him a full-blown anti-Israel and anti-American Islamic revolution, I would refrain from pushing this similarity on the reader, except to point out the quaint similarity of unintended consequences and false expectations of the West in both these cases. In fact, United Russia’s unquestionable loss of a large handful of votes by no means spells out the Russian hardliners’ loss and West’s gain. Taking a closer look at these figures, we see that Russia’s Communists, leftwing socialists and extreme nationalists have nearly doubled their clout in the country, while those pro-Western personalities who have virtually monopolized the ear of a sympathetic Western public have all but disappeared from the Russian radar screen. Had Sunday election not been “fiddled with” at all, as alleged, the end result for the West might have been truly frightening…
In other words, here is the real result of Russia’s parliamentary elections 2011. The Putin-Medvedev party garnering about fifty per cent of the popular vote will from now on have to accommodate a good forty-five per cent of hard-line socialists and Russian nationalists, thus moving Russia’s political center even further from policies accommodating the West toward an unflinching take-it-or-leave-it stance, with an emphasis on Russia’s increased military might and a further strengthening of her anti-American alliances.
Come to think of it, effective 2012 Mr. Putin will be just about the last American friend in the new Russian government. I am sure that he will enjoy his role tremendously, and for this reason he must like last night’s election results very much.
The dominant Putin-Medvedev party United Russia is currently balancing on the tightrope of 50%, which is a very significant drop indeed, since the last Duma elections, in 2007, when the party received 64.3% of the total vote. Thus, in purely numerical measures the “Putin Party” did lose some ground.
But what does this drop really signify? As I am writing this, there’s plenty of gloating in the West about Mr. Putin’s alleged debacle, and Russia’s pro-American oppositionists are ecstatic about it, although very angry about the reported incidents of rigged elections in different localities of the country. Judging from the news reports spread throughout the Western world, Russia is again on the unstoppable march toward an America-friendly pro-capitalist democracy, defying a clique of some Soviet-era leftovers and KGB apparatchiks who are desperately trying to put a wrench in the progressive clockwork of history.
I pity those Western news audiences who may have received this news with a straight face and believed it. It is therefore important to put certain basic facts in proper perspective, which is the purpose of this posting.
…Although there is an eerie similarity here with certain recent events clustered together under the caption “Arab Spring,” where the democratic genie let out of the bottle, with the full complicity of the West, brings forth with him a full-blown anti-Israel and anti-American Islamic revolution, I would refrain from pushing this similarity on the reader, except to point out the quaint similarity of unintended consequences and false expectations of the West in both these cases. In fact, United Russia’s unquestionable loss of a large handful of votes by no means spells out the Russian hardliners’ loss and West’s gain. Taking a closer look at these figures, we see that Russia’s Communists, leftwing socialists and extreme nationalists have nearly doubled their clout in the country, while those pro-Western personalities who have virtually monopolized the ear of a sympathetic Western public have all but disappeared from the Russian radar screen. Had Sunday election not been “fiddled with” at all, as alleged, the end result for the West might have been truly frightening…
In other words, here is the real result of Russia’s parliamentary elections 2011. The Putin-Medvedev party garnering about fifty per cent of the popular vote will from now on have to accommodate a good forty-five per cent of hard-line socialists and Russian nationalists, thus moving Russia’s political center even further from policies accommodating the West toward an unflinching take-it-or-leave-it stance, with an emphasis on Russia’s increased military might and a further strengthening of her anti-American alliances.
Come to think of it, effective 2012 Mr. Putin will be just about the last American friend in the new Russian government. I am sure that he will enjoy his role tremendously, and for this reason he must like last night’s election results very much.
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