ELECTIONS IN RUSSIA: 1999
Elections were not actually free, as all previos Russian elections. What is
much worse, no one in Russia is now interested in stressing this fact. Even most
"democratic" media avoid any discussion of the theme. People are afraid of the
"exploding" the situation. In this 1999 differ from 1991 and other elections,
when voices of protest were present.
But several facts make the falsification evident. The party "Russia is our
house", which was the winner on the previous elections, received less than 1%
of votes. The party "Yedinstvo" (Unity), which was organized by the government
two months ago, became the leader instead. Voters cannot change their opinion
with such speed, but regional bosses can. They automatically support the "governmental
party." The same is true concerning communists: they are favorites not of the
population, but of the former Communist nomenclature, still at power in most of
the Russian lands.
Other examples of fantastic and shameless falsification are 70% of votes "received"
by major of Moscow Yury Luzhkov. His party "Fatherland" received 10% in average
� but in some regions it received less that 5%, and some more than 40% � and maximum
it received in the regions whose leaders support Luzhkov.
In general, elections in Russia continue to remind the medieval system of elections
through princes-electors. Western politicians also remember about Russian H-bombs
and so they also prefer to be blind to tiny uglynesses of the Russian political
life.
Much worse is the fact that all Russia politicians now represent one political
and spiritual trend.
All of them � from Gaydar to Zyuganov � support the war in Chechnya.
All of them use anti-Western rhetoric. All of them support former KGB-men (Putin,
Primakov, Stepashin) in their march to power.
Neither of them (even Yavlinsky, Gaidar or Chubais) support religious freedom
or protest against unconstitutional union of the bureaucracy and Russian Orthodox
Church.
Neither if them support the rule of law and real economic competition, real
private property, real separation of power.
And the worst of all is that our politicians are as far from democracy as the
majority of population.
But I am also the part of population, and I know many people who will continue
to work in the spirit of liberty for the return of Russians from the world of
infantile illusions to the normal life, with all her complications and problems.
Hot example of how KGB-men construct their policy. Prime-minister
Putin said that the government must support some Islamic leader in Chechnya, the
enemy of Chechen�s president Maskhadov, just like the government support the Russian
Orthodox Church ("Russkaya mysl," 9.12.1999, p. 6). And our "liberals" (Gaidar-Kirienko-Chubais)
support Putin as well as our anti-liberals, so it is highly probable that he will
become the next Russian president.
In Vladivostok (Siberia) bishop Veniamin Pushkar� issued the letter
with the protest against performance of the Webber�s "Jesus Christ Superstar"
in the theater. He wrote: "Actor profane the image of Christ and so drive the
Lord out of the spectator�s soul" (Komsomolskaya Pravda, 16.12.1999). He
called this spectacle the sacrilege and accused the journalist Natalya Ostrovskaya
who defended rock-music in being "non-patriot." Bishop stressed that "boogie-woogie"
(i.e. Webber�s music; in Russia this terms was used my the Communist propaganda
from mid-fifties as pejorative designation of the Western "immoral music") are
worse than Russian folk songs. |
