… By Russia! Go figure.

THE international organisation that criticised the conduct of elections in Georgia before the Velvet Revolution and in Ukraine before the Orange Revolution has been accused by the Russian Government of double standards.

Criticism of electoral abuses in former Soviet states by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) could ???????sometimes trigger unrest and destroy stability and is used by the extremist forces in those countries???????, said Alexey Borodavkin, Russia????????s Ambassador to the organisation.

He said that the OSCE needed to introduce reforms to its procedure for election monitoring and accused the organisation of fomenting revolution. He made his remarks in an interview at the OSCE????????s annual parliamentary assembly in Washington this weekend.

Observers sent by the OSCE have criticised elections in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the past two years. Their reports are said to have played an important role in strengthening the opposition in those countries, and have been a factor leading to revolutions.

The article goes on to note that many of the OSCE monitors are from the former USSR itself. Go figure.

But if the OSCE is actually politicizing its election findings, then Russia would certainly know. That’s because they themselves are the masters of politicizing such things, the biggest example of which are the CIS election monitors. You have to wonder, given the declared stance of the Russian government and the surrounding dictatorships that participate in CIS missions, why exactly they are so willing to universally declare elections in places such as Kyrgyzstan free and fair.

Well, CIS observers are told what they’ll be writing in their reports before they even reach their destinations. Some even have their papers filled out beforehand. No wonder nobody wants them to monitor their elections! For example, when Moldova held its recent parliamentary elections, the OSCE made its survey and found several faults but declared it overall as representative. Russia, however, has a large interest in Moldova and even financed the Moscow-leaning Democratic Moldova bloc. Moldova ended up kicking out several CIS and Belarussian observers beforehand. The few CIS observers still inside the country declared the election rigged — a first for them, I’m sure. No “grape revolution” ever formented, but the ruling pro-EU “communists” had to go into coalition with pro-Romania Christian Democrats in order to re-relect President Voronin. A good step, as standards continue to improve in that country.

So it’s pretty laughable to hear the Russian government accuse others of heavy politicization and corruption. Perhaps it can only see the world through its own lenses since it’s waist high in its own garbage most of the time.