On Sunday Parliamentary elections were held in Russia. Although the final results will publicized in a few days the general picture of the composition of the Parliament is clear even now. This picture is not unexpected at all. The Yedinaya Rossia (Joint Russia) Party had a destructive victory headed by the Russian President Vladimir Putin (over 63% of votes). Three more parties were able to overcome the required 7% threshold – the Communist Party of RF (11.7% by preliminary results), Vladimir Zhirinovski’s Liberal Democratic Party (8.5%) and Fair Russia Party (8%), which is headed by the President of the Upper Chamber of the Parliament Sergey Mironov. After the publication of preliminary results nothing unexpected happened. Yedinaya Rossia received congratulations, Zhirinovski is not dissatisfied, neither is Mironov. Communists and all the parties, which didn’t go to Parliament, complain, such as the Union of Leftists and the Yabloko. They speak of various electoral violations and are going to appeal the results of the elections. The reaction of the western media wasn’t unexpected either, which had always criticized the incumbent government of Russia. For example the British “Independent” writes, “The winners are the ones, whose opinion somehow fits with the allowed specter of the Kremlin. Others didn’t receive anything.” The British newspaper compared the Russian elections with the Referendum related the policy of the adopted policy of Putin. The Independent doesn’t smoothly agree with the elections results because they believe that the Yedinaya Rossia was able to win only it was controlling all the electronic means of media and due to suspicious means. Another British newspaper, the Guardian also drew attention to this topic, the long title of which already says everything – “Terror and dirty games help Putin to have confident victory.” The article also writes about the pressure on the employees of the state administration, terror and arrests of opposition activists, etc. The French Les Echos calls the Russian elections “operation plebiscite” and mocked by writing, “The people have actively participated in the elections to declare to the world how popular Putin is, who is planning to maintain his power even after the Presidential elections on March 2.” The German Sueddeutsche Zeitung thinks that Putin only has one purpose to maintain his power, although its still doubtful how they are going to implement it. The German newspaper entitled its article, “Capitalism in the Soviet face.” And the American New York Times expressed an opinion that the main question, which interests the Russians remained unanswered. “For hundreds of years the Russian power came from above, doesn’t matter from the Tsar, First Secretary of the USSR or the Russian President. People already guess who they should show their vassal loyalty.” According to the New York Times ones thing is clear for sure the President is not going to disappear from the arena (or in Armenian terminology become a young pensioner). Not only the US media but also the US government are dissatisfied by the results of the Russian elections. “In the first messages sent from Russia among other things there are also accusations about the violations, which took place on the election day. We request the Russian government to process those accusations,” said the official representative of the White House Gordon Jondro. The opinions of the international monitors do not drastically differ from the abovementioned assessments either. “The main conclusion is that the Sunday voting didn’t conform to our principles and criteria,” stated the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Goran Lenmarker. The head of the Parliamentary delegation of the Council of Europe Luke van der Brand also criticized the process of elections. In his words the Russian President and his administration have pressured the official campaign and they have obviously used administrative resources. “Therefore we cannot say that the elections have proceeded freely,” said Brand. Russia in the person of a member of the RF Central Electoral Commission has responded to those accusations by saying that the statements of the OSCE monitors are not objective. And the reality is the following: the Russians don’t care about those statements and the results cannot be shifted. The only difference is that the European monitors have started not to notice the violations, which take place in Armenia and the international media doesn’t care about us.
