I Didn’t Vote!

A fascinating movement has grown in small Ingushetia, a small autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. In the recent parliamentary elections, local officials claimed that more than 98.35% of the registered voters turned out and98.72% of those supported Putin’s United Russia.

These figures are blatantly false and a local movement has started to gather signatures of people officially stating “I Did Not Vote!” Paul Goble, who runs a great blog on Eurasia, has been following the movement. His latest post details that the movement has gathered signed statements from a stunning 54.5% of registered voters indicating that they did not submit ballots.

That type of organization is pretty impressive. Paul indicates that other groups may seek to replicate it elsewhere, but I doubt that will be feasible. This movement is finally being picked up by the domestic and international media.

Money quote:

The signed declarations have been put into 290 volumes that are now in the hands of Moscow lawyers who plan to transmit them to the Procurator General of the Russian Federation with a request that the election results from Ingushetia at least be reviewed and possibly overturned.

Reporting of this kind is the reason for the continuing efforts by Zyazikov and Moscow to close down the independent-minded Ingushetia.ru site. Having failed to do so through pressure on the local ISP provider, redirection of visitors to porno sites, and threats on the life of the site owner’s father, this week the authorities did something new.

They overloaded the site’s popular forums with material so radical that its posting would certainly subject the site’s current owners to charges of extremism and thus forced them to restrict access to the forums to registered users lest such posts become the basis for officials to shut down the site itself.

The state is clearing feeling the heat of this grassroots movement. In a country where the central government has such firm control over many of the levers of power, I believe one of the best tactics to undermine it is to do exactly this. Gather irrefutable evidence and throw yourself with it at the corrupt gears of the state and demand a response. Every time the Russian government fails to act on something this blatant, they hurt their international credibility and domestic legitimacy as proving for the “rule of law.”

Duma Elections

Putin’s great farce of an election has come and gone. Unsurprisingly, United Russia (the most pro-Putin party) received more 64%, the Communist Party received approximately 11%, the Liberal-Democratic Party (read Fascist-Nationalist Party, also pro-Putin) received approximately 8%, and the Fair Russia (also, pro-Putin) received just over 7% clearing the threshold. Because of seat allocation rules, United Russia will receive more than the two-thirds of the seats in the Duma – more than enough to press through any changes to the constitution or otherwise.

I don’t have much to say about this farce, except that the world should call it that. Russia should be dismissed from the G-8, the OSCE, and other international organization in which being a democracy is a stated requirement. To not acknowledge this blatant abuse is to appease a petty dictator and his coterie of sycophants, permitting them to continue to strengthen their authoritarian system of governing over what is one of the strategically most important countries to US interests.

Lastly, anyone who thinks this election may have even had a hint of legitimacy, I submit two items. According to the Russian Central Election Commission website:

•  Chechnya – home of a violent separatist movement for more than a decade reported turnout of more than, by 7pm had a turn out of more than 92% and I’ve seen news reports with a final turnout number of 99% with 99% of voters in Grozny, the Chechan capital, voting for United Russia.
• Ingushetia Republic – another majority Muslim region with a significant separatist movement, also had turnout of more than 92% by 7pm with total final turnout listed at 98%.

The Other Russia blog has a detailed list of vote-fraud techniques employed during the election.