The Democratic Piece

Robert Amsterdam has a bit of exclusive news that, if true, seems to be really unsettling:

Here’s an interesting bit of exclusive news: a trusted colleague of mine has leaked to me copies of a series of worrying placards being printed right now in Moscow by the Nashi for distribution on Sunday following (or during) the successful elections. These items of propaganda urge Putin supporters to take to the streets in premature celebration, to defend the outcome before it is announced officially on Dec. 6. It is in many ways an open gesture of confession that even the Nashi don’t believe that a real election is taking place.

The posters use highly incendiary language and aggressive caricatures in the name of the president, similar to an exhortation to riot seen in other countries far less developed than Russia. I’m considerably concerned about this development, and I warn all friends and colleagues in Moscow to exercise extreme care in the days between the election and the announcement of results. It seems that the murder of a Yabloko candidate, the arrest and jailing of Kasparov and others, and the ongoing violence at any opposition rally isn’t enough to satisfy the Nashi. I fear the worst could still be yet to come.

We expect to post some scans of these materials on the blog within 24 hours.

I’ve written here before about Nashi. The “color revolutions” in Russia near abroad really unsettled the Kremlin. The development of popular demonstrations to overthrow seemingly entrenched regimes showed them the power of the public. Since, Putin has sought to do everything in his power to stymie the development of such organizations in Russia. One of the Kremlin’s solutions was to establish a uncivil society organization that could be called upon to counter any demonstrations. Nashi has been used in the months leading up to the election to intimidate opposition groups and demonstrations.

I  am sure this seems like a smart strategy now for Putin, but youth organizations are notoriously difficult to manage. They can reliably be called upon to demonstrate, but they can also turn on a regime. Putin is playing with fire, and sadly the rest of Russia could easily get burned.

The Other Russia blog reports Garry Kasparov is out of prison. Kasparov leads Other Russia, a coalition of opposition parties aiming to surmount new institutional hurdles in next week’s Duma elections. He was arrested for protesting last week.

According to the blog, Kasparov says the arrest was a signal of Putin’s commitment to crack down if the opposition pushes back. But the former chess champ isn’t fazed; he’s writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

Pakistan Update: Mere ours after being sworn in this morning to a second five-year term, President Musharraf announced that the state of emergency would be lifted on December 16th.  As reported by the New York Times:

If he goes ahead with the move, it could be an important step in Pakistan’s recent tumultuous politics, which has seen the president impose emergency rule on Nov. 3, suspending the Constitution, dismissing the Supreme Court and arresting thousands of opponents.

An important step, yes, but in which direction?  The ability of a (man formerly known as a) military dictator to suspend the rule of law, arrest the opposition (but not move against the real security threat), black out the independent media, and then end it on his own terms with no tangible consequences shouldn’t be viewed as a positive development for Pakistani politics.

As a testament to his sincerity of purpose, however, Musharraf was moved to tears by his own speech in which he pronounced: “Right now, I think the dust is settling down and everything is under control,” at the same time warning the assembled international diplomats and press:

It is indeed a historic day and an emotional day for me. This is a milestone in the transition of Pakistan to the complete essence of democracy.

Elections alone do not mean democracy… We want democracy, we want human rights, we want civil liberties but we will do it our own way.

Reject representative rule and then castigate the international community for preventing Pakistan from finding its own way to democracy?  He needs to take a look at the streets, where lawyers are still protesting, being beaten and jailed for supporting a different vision of democracy, one in which dissenting views are allowed.  

I have a feeling that Musharraf’s idea of “Pakistani democracy” looks a lot like Putin’s.

To paraphrase Dame Judy:   A bright spot in the dark winter of our academic calendar!  The president of Iran has a blog, and he’s posting.  I don’t care if it’s real.  Note that comments are enabled, even if (probably) screened… by any number of governments.   Blog and other links here.  P.S. According to the Post, Barney’s Christmas video has wrapped, as well. There’s just so much to look forward to.

This weekend there were a few interesting stories regarding the situation in Pakistan.

On Friday the BBC noted that the newly installed Pakistani Supreme Court ruled that Musharraf reelection in October was valid. No surpise there, but apparently the decision also stated that General Musharraf will have to step down as Chief-of-Staff of the Army before being sworn in for a new term.

The NYTimes covers Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistan this weekend. Sharif first attempted to return back in September, but was forced back onto a plane heading back to Saudi Arabia. This is a huge blow to Musharraf who weeks before had vowed that Sharif would not be permitted to return to Pakistan. It is still unclear why this was permitted to occur, but it may be due to Musharraf’s waning influence. Perhaps the military pressured him to allow Sharif’s return so that the elections in January may appear more legitimate and coincide with Musharraf’s resignation, thus appearing to restore a facade of democracy to Pakistan and relieving international pressure.

Today’s NYTimes also had an interesting store on Pakistan’s burgeoning middle class. The story notes that Pakistan’s strong economic growth under Musharraf has resulted in a growing middle class. However, this new group has so far remained only somewhat politically engaged, but has recently grown somewhat disillusioned with the Musharraf government as corruption and political turmoil has hurt the economy. Importantly, the article notes that the middle class is also afraid of the threat of Islamic radicals, but doubt that the Musharraf government is able to handle the problem and that the US would support a new civilian regime.

If the US is losing the faith of the Pakistani middle class, we are truly losing Pakistan.

Garry Kasparov is spending five days in jail for protesting Russia’s new ballot access law, Richard Winger reports. Kasparov is leader of The Other Russia, a confederation of opposition parties.

He’s in near total isolation, unable to see relatives and colleagues or even make a phone call.

Other Russia runs a blog on a dot-org, so we’ll still hear from them after thugs shut down the .ru page.

High-five to the Russian opposition. Responding to an earlier post by Danny, I asked how parties would respond to the new institutional environment - especially a 7% threshold and needing 50,000 members for ballot status. What’s more, Putin rendered retail politics nearly useless by eliminating single-member districts last summer. Other Russia is clearly a strategy for dealing with these hurdles.

This fascinating election is just around the corner. Not only have psephologists modeled how the aggregate “two-party” vote plays out in individual districts; the media actually pay attention! (If your average US newspaper paid attention to district-level margins and two-party votes, people would take presidential and congressional elections for the uninteresting, predictable “contests” they really are.)

What’s more, Australia uses IRV (alternative vote, etc.) to elect the House of Representatives. So the best models have to take into account which of the two major coalitions/parties will receive preference transfers from small party candidates. Malcolm Mackerras - I met him in 2006 while working in electoral reform - developed just such a model, which is the basis for this calculator at the ABC. His “electoral pendulum” doesn’t work so well in the US, where the big challenge is controlling for incumbency, not vote transfers.

Fruits and Votes, who has numerous Australian readers, has been following the election. He reports a tightening projected margin, but Labor is projected to win the “two-party preferred” vote 52-48 over PM Howard’s Coalition.

After he was written off as a ‘has-been’, John Howard’s last week of campaigning will give the Coalition hope of pulling off a miraculous victory tomorrow.

Labor is still in front and favourite to win the 2007 election but the latest Newspoll survey is showing a late surge to the Howard Government, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia.

Newspoll’s two-party preferred figure, based on preference flows at the 2004 election, has the Labor Party in front by 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent.

The sample size was larger than average - 2614.

Last week the two-party preferred figure was 54 for Labor and 46 per cent for the Coalition.

Yes, there’s been some tightening of the margin, and I’m a fairly new observer of Australian electoral politics, but this looks like a Labor win. By American standards, 52-48 is a big spread. In fact, that’s how well the Republicans did in 2002, just 14 months after 9/11. (That says something about what the Democrats’ 54% in 2006 meant - and what any GOP nominee faces in 2008.)

Tomorrow was supposed to see Nepal elect a constituent assembly. But the Maoist arm of the Communist Party of Nepal has refused to participate unless Prime Minister Koirala and the Seven Party Alliance (or six, or eight, depending on whom you ask) agree to (1) abolish the monarchy and (2) use closed-list proportional representation in one district. There seems to be consensus on the first point. Now there are stirrings in the SPA of a compromise on the electoral system: mixed-member proportional.

At an interaction held in the capital on Friday, Maoist chairman Prachanda had called for reviewing their agreements with the seven (now six) parties and the government. “We are also in favour of reviewing the agreements as there are still problems in their implementation,” KC said.

President of the Janamorcha Nepal Amik Sherchan said directives of the special session of the House could be given a constitutional status by incorporating a provision in the interim constitution that “Nepal is federal democratic republic state” to be implemented by the first meeting of the constituent assembly.

Sherchan said the Maoists could be convinced on MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system provided that the government agreed to fully implement all the agreements reached in the past.

The Maoists’ obsession with proportionality is counterintuitive given their rural base of support. One would expect them to benefit from a large nominal tier of small districts. (Indeed, that’s what we were blogging earlier this year.) Maybe they know something we don’t - that they don’t have pluralities in those districts, or that they have significant bases of support in the major towns and cities (they’re “packed” in Congress-speak). Or maybe nobody knows anything, and nobody wants to bank on the disproportionality that comes with districts any smaller than the whole country. That would make sense given the Maoists and one or two other groups have not yet faced an electoral contest.

But it doesn’t make sense for the Seven Party Alliance who’s refused to meet the Maoists’ demand - unless their refusal is grounded in something less tangible than a seat outcome (credible commitment to make the institutions work, respecting the electoral commission’s hard work to date).

Regionally disaggregated data is proving hard to find. IDEA has a helpful and recent survey of public opinion in Nepal. Here’s a summary of findings from the Nepali Times.

Here is Election Guide’s page on Nepal, but it doesn’t seem right. From what I can tell, a unicameral interim parliament is running the country according to an interim constitution. King Gyanendra and the upper house are sitting on the sidelines, and the military (generally supporting the monarchy) is quiet for now.

Here is the new electoral commission. Note how miffed they are at the Maoists’ intransigence; they’ve been laying the groundwork for an election, after all, with the help of IFES. Here’s the old EC website.

If anyone knows where to find regional data on party ID and public opinion, please leave a comment or drop an e-mail.

De Rebus Antiquis Et Novis again has a great post detailing some of the dirty campaign tactics being used against the opposition parties in the run up to the legislative elections on December 2nd.

I really recommend checking out his post and reading through the examples he has stumbled across, but this is my favorite from the batch:

In the town Balashov, Saratov region, people who planned to vote for Spravedlivaya Rossiya (Fair Russia) receive letters with condolences on the death of their relatives. All their relatives were alive. The fake letters were “signed” by Zinaida Samsonova, the candidate of Fair Russia.

He also notes a recent poll:

55.9% of the interviewees said that they will vote for the United Russia. 5.8% support the Communist Party, 4.7% support Liberal-Democratic Party, 4.9% will vote for the Fair Russia. The threshold for eligibility to win seats in Duma is 7%.

Two things should be noted about this. First, under the new electoral rules, there has to be at least two parties represented in the Duma. If only one party passes a 7% threshold, then the second place party with the strongest showing is awarded seats in the Duma. I am not sure how may seats that party will actually get, but obviously too few to be an real opposition. However, it does also allow for the Kremlin to maintain a “two-party” democratic facade.

Second, my Russian is pretty rusty but I scanned the linked article regarding the poll. The numbers described in De Rebus’ post did not quite add up, so I wanted to see what the article said directly.  The article notes that 13.3% of the respondents were “undecided.” If you take all the totals listed in the article (55.9%, 5.8%, 4.7%, 4.9%, and 13.3%), 15% is still unaccounted for? If I remember correctly, there are 11 parties cleared to run in this election. Is this 15% spread amongst the remaining 7 parties?

The article also notes that the poll shows party support amongst those respondents who were “likely to vote.” In that grouping, United Russia receives 63.8%, the Communists 7.3%, Fair Russia (Kremlin-created opposition party) at 6%, and the Liberal-Democratic Party at 5.2%. This may be a more realistic assessment of party-support than that listed in De Rebus’ post.

Hopefully De Rebus will continue to post the updates regarding the election environment. He’s on the ground and in a unique position to bring these things to light to the Western and English-reading observers. This is even more important considering that the OSCE will not be observing these elections and are unable to comment on the pre-election campaign environment.

As I’ve mentioned here before, the Russia is in the middle of legislative elections. The elections are scheduled for December 2nd, but no one expects the process to be transparent or the electoral environment to be fair. The OSCE announced last week that it is unable to send its regular observation team to evaluate the Russian elections because delays on the part of Russia in terms of invitations and visas.

De Rebus Antiquis Et Novis, a blog that typically specializes on Russian history, had an interesting post today about the electoral environment.  While there have been multiple reports about campaign literature of opposition parties being seized so that it may be examined for “extremist” messages, this is truly a new low in Russian politics (brackets are mine).

I was told yesterday of new leaflets posted on the walls in one of the districts of Samara. The text was like this: “Dear citizens, the Union of the Rightist Forces (SPS) [a pro-market, pro-democracy opposition party with support typically ranging from 3-6% under the old electoral rules] informs you that we have asked AIDS-infected people to participate in our campaign to disseminate printed materials and to participate in the public opinion polls as interviewers. Please, be tolerant towards them.”

Considering the AIDS-phobia, imagine the reaction of the average people when an SPS interviewer would knock their doors… I’ve never heard of such tricks before.