Speak Now, Russians, or Forever Hold your Peace
Filed under: Russia
This coming Sunday, December 2nd, is shaping up to be the single most important day in Russian history, perhaps the last chance the people of Russia will ever have to show the world they don't want confrontation and can responsibly manage their nation.
Up to 110 million eligible Russian voters will head to the polls to choose a new lower house of their legislature, called the "Duma," analogous to the U.S. House of Representatives except that Russians can only vote for political parties, not individual candidates, and only those parties receiving more than 7% of the vote get seats (only parties with more than 50,000 registered members are eligible to run).
Vladimir Putin has done all he can to assure that his own party, United Russia, will be the only one left standing when the dust settles after the election. Seven parties have made it onto the ballot, but only two other than Putin's are currently at 7% or greater support in opinion polls -- those being the Communists and the fanatical supporters of radical nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. United Russia is currently polling at 60% or better; it only needs to improve on that marginally, by hook or crook, to seize control of the entire Duma.
Both of the two credible opposition groups to Putin, Grigori Yavlinsky's Yabloko and Boris Nemtsov's Union of Right Forces, are polling below 1% -- and despite that Putin is still so afraid of them that, as we reported yesterday, he publicly called them "jackals" and had them arrested (Kasparov is still cooling his heels). If the people of Russia leave things that way when they vote (or if they allow Putin to rig the elections without lifting a finger to stop it), history will issue them its most weighty sanction, and the world will write Russia off as "Zaire with permafrost." A new cold war will begin in earnest, and Russia -- sooner rather than later -- will go the way of the USSR. It's ominously rumored that Putin will address the nation today or tomorrow and lay out further details of his malignant plan to remain Russia's authoritarian ruler for life.
Speak now, Russians, or forever hold your peace.
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