Russian Election Debates

A number of things happened in the past month that prevented me from web logging my experiences and opinions. 1. I got awesome new business cards. 2. Work on an "odd-couple" novel about an American student-teacher and a Russian prostitute who have to break the Tolstoy riddle--or else Vladimir V. Putin may die of poisoning! 3. Incredible laziness. 4. Too cheap to pay for home internet anymore. (This is also related to point 3, because the place to pay for internet is about a mile walk round trip from the bus stop.)

I've also been watching a lot of the official political debates that come on at 11:00pm after the new pan-European War and Peace mini-series (which is awful). Each debate last a half-hour and pits three political parties against each other to political-thriller-movie background music. Each day at least two of the parties are different so every party is represented, with the noticeable exception Edinaia Rossia (United Russia), the party in charge of the country.

The majority party, which controls the government which controls the television stations airing the debates, has obviously not been excluded. I'm going to guess that the party refused to debate for three reasons: first, they could only lose authority by allowing other parties to question them face to face; second, because they already have power, the campaign basically runs itself and the candidates, all active officials, are involved in government related activities; third, if someone with real power condescended to debate, them people might watch the debates.

The debates, then, are virtually meaningless, although hilarious. They also tend to discredit legitimate political parties with meaningful programs by association with people like far-right nationalist demagogue, Vladimir Zhirinovsky (on Bush here), who screams "LDPR! LDPR! LDPR!" at the end of every debate in which he participates. He also said that LDPR's slogan "What's good for Russians is good for everybody" was changed from the previous because he wanted to make sure all nationalities were included. In every debate the representative of the Union of the Right Forces, Boris Nemtsov, poses the same question to every party, "[Says that pensions are too small, the army is weak, too many dogs in the street, etc] what party is responsible for this disgrace?!" and the person from the other party says Edinaia Rossia, because they do control the government but the answer means nothing.

That question is actually the strongest appearance of opposition in the debates. The second strongest party, Spravedlivaia Rossia (Just [as in fair] Russia), "opposes Edinaia Rossia" but votes for the legislative program to show solidarity with Putin. The Communist Party refrased their explanation but voted for the same program. (Severely criticizing it!) I suppose it's not any better in the US, although the cult of personality Putin has formed around himself (and his barrel chest) does not seem to be a factor in Bush's case.

The real opposition is of two types: the kind that is ridiculous and uses pie-in-the-sky advertising such as the Union of Right Forces and the Democratic Party of Russia, whose advertisements of a future newcast from 2020 with Russia in the European Union for some reason play more than any other party's; or the they are realistic but get very little airtime like Yabloka or Grazhdanskaia Sila [Citizen's Power]--which has an awesome video their website, complete with creepy mustache.