A Predictable, Clean Finish to a Dirty Race

The parliamentary elections finished without a hitch for Edinaia Rossia, not surprisingly. The communists, who are the largest minority now, and Yabloko, a center-liberal party, have alleged some violations of the elections and have produced a list of fairly detailed complaints. While I have no doubt these things happen, this is energy misplaced. The violations are mostly limited to one or two districts or, at most, a city and are small things, like confusing ballots or voting without registration. These things probably should be investigated, but though a change of several thousand votes may swing a Duma seat from one party to another, it means nothing for the small parties.

Yabloko is grousing up the wrong tree. By and large Edinaia Rossia let the TsIK (Central Election Commission) do its work counting votes and do it openly. (I thought it strange that 99% of Chechnya voted for Edinaia Rossia but this can probably be explained by a combination of fear of the central government, fear of the local leader (a former rebel now Edinaia Rossia's leading candidate in Chechya), respect of the local leader and the fact that current and future government is pumping lots of money into rebuilding Grozny.) So if Yabloko shouldn't complain about the way the elections turned out, what should they complain about?


1. Putin's role in the election: According to the Russian constitution, the President must be party-less. So how can Putin head Edinaia Rossia's candidate list? Other political parties brought this to a judge's attention to no avail; Putin is the top candidate but not officially a member of the party. Okay, but what happens when Putin wins? He simply refuses the office and continues to be president or stops being president to become a Duma representative, much like what would have happened had John Kerry won the presidential election (only the opposite). While this legal decision is understandable, it clearly misinterprets the spirit of the law, which intended for the president to be a mediator between parties rather than a partisan supporter of one or another party.

2. Raising the percentage to enter parliament: This election required a party to receive more than 7% to have any candidate in the Duma; the minimum previously was 5%. The effect of this is two-fold. First, a party like Yabloka is unlikely to get 7% of the vote but could possibly get 5%. Ditto for the Agrarian Party, a former faction of the Communist Party. People who would have supported Yabloko or the Agrarian Party voted for a larger party, primarily Spravedlivaia Rossia (a left-wing pro-Kremlin party) and the Communist Party, respectively. In addition, some people just didn't go to vote at all.

The second effect of this change is that the four parties which enter the Duma will divide up the roughly 10% of seats representing the population that didn't vote for them. By percentages, Edinaia Rossia, the Communists, LDPR (a right-wing nationalist party) and Spravedlivaia Rossia should receive 284, 50, 38 and 36 seats, respectively. As it is, they will receive around 308, 58, 44 and 40, respectively (all the votes are not counted yet so don't quote me on these figures, not official but the best I can do). Had, say, Spravedlivaia Rossia lost 2 percentage points to Yabloko, the approximate distribution of the three remaining parties would be 345, 60, 45, respectively. As such, Edinaia Rossia has really stacked the deck against smaller parties contending for Duma seats and strengthened their own majority by taking the seats that would represent small parties.

On a side note, Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces and Grazhdanskaia Sila are also to blame for their failure in this respect. As the leader of the latter admitted on television last night, the three parties are similar enough that have no reason not to combine into an opposition block. In fact, simply combining their results gives them around 5%, which would have likely inspired and mobilized the non-voting opposition.

3. The removal of the protest vote: Before 2003 Russians could cast a protest vote against all parties. If this option receives a majority, the whole process repeats itself. Hard to imagine this would actually happen but when a large percentage votes against all it at least shows public dissatisfaction. While some of these protest votes may have funneled into, say, Spravedlivaia Rossia, Yabloko, etc., more likely is that these people just stayed home.

4. Edinaia Rossia's use of the media: As I mentioned in previous posts, Edinaia Rossia campaigned in the guise of regular programming, in particular on news programs and "special reports" on protests, while other parties were relegated to late night commercial spots and ridiculous debates. It's hard to compete when the first half of the news covers the campaigns of Edinaia Rossia candidates, followed by sports and the weather.


Non-Edinaia Rossia parties are pointing these things out, too, but in a much more muted fashion, while they are putting voting fraud--a relatively minor problem--in the forefront. I can see the same thing happening in the presidential election whenever Putin reveals his preferential successor. Anyway, here's my favorite poster from the election: