No Russian election in modern times has been more repressed than the Duma election this weekend. But here there may also be sprouts for liberation.
VOTES UNDER A HIGHER SKY ?: Voters vote in a former St. Petersburg palace. Photo: AP / NTB view more
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Manager: This is an editorial from Dagbladet, and expresses the newspaper’s views. Dagbladet’s political editor is responsible for the editorial.
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Something new forces emerges in the Russian political construction, pseudo-democracy. Or should we just call it the pseudo-dictatorship? The results of last weekend’s parliamentary elections, despite quite extensive electoral fraud, show a marked decline in President Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia. And a similar growth for the party which, above all, is reaping the fruits of dissatisfaction, the Communists.
This is interesting because it means that many of those who have voted for the Communists have contributed to a mandate for change. There is an expectation of a real opposition policy from a large party in the election result. It could be more dangerous for Putin than the systemic opposition he crushed even before the election.
“IN GOOD PHYSICAL FORM”: Russian President Vladimir Putin took a two-day vacation to Lake Baikal in Siberia. Among other things, he fished underwater fishing there. Video: AP DV / NTB Scanpix view more
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That means in that case that what can increasingly become a real opposition has been given an official rostrum, which cannot be silenced without stepping on an elected parliament. Thus, Putin’s political construction, “governed democracy” – or pseudo-democracy – can still become a more open system. Despite Putin’s efforts to crush all opposition before the election, by declaring the supporters of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny “extremists” and making sure they are literally caught up in criminal law. And by declaring critical and independent press, and sections of civil society, “foreign agents”, to delegitimize them, and take from them financial support.
An election turnout at only around 47 per cent say theirs about a “democracy” in flames. Participation would be even smaller without election fraud. Putin’s United Russia party, for example, had around 30 percent of opinion polls before the election. That it seems to have received 49 percent without anyone having registered any election wind, is suspicious. The independent election observers in Golos – branded as a foreign agent – have reported thousands of cases of electoral fraud that they have registered. While the official election commission confines itself to having registered 12.
Next to the Communist Party’s growth to almost 20 percent, a completely new party has made a splash. The party’s name is the ingenious New Faces, because that’s exactly what voters want. They were likely to get 5.4 percent of the votes when almost all votes were counted, and will thus, after all, be judged above the threshold of 5.
Their voters appear to be young people who are liberal and preoccupied with business, confusingly similar to the profile of Navalny’s supporters. Will this be a real opposition party? And because of the expectations of the voters, will the Communists become a more real opposition party? This most repressed choice in modern Russian history may, paradoxically, be more liberating than some had thought.
