Czar Putin Wins Elections
In what comes as a surprise to everyone, I am sure, “President Vladimir Putin’s party won a landslide victory in a parliamentary election, official results showed on Monday, giving him a mandate to shape Russia’s political landscape after his second term ends next year.”
And this while we all thought that Putin would simply retire from public office after his second term, like every good democrat would do.
The New York Times points out that the opposition isn’t happy with the results, and not with the way the election was organized: “They said biased media coverage during the campaign, overt government support for Putin’s United Russia party and numerous irregularities during voting had skewed the outcome.”
All in all, Putin’s party received some 64% of the votes. That’s so high in a multi-party system that it’s ridiculous. Calling it a landslide would be an understatement. Not only did Putin’s party do well, pro-Western parties performed horribly: they won zero (0) seats.
Although many foreign observers would probably argue that Putin isn’t popular, etc. I think that he is actually incredibly popular. As I see it, Russians don’t care about democracy right now. They care about stability. They care about economic growth. They care about fighting the mafia. They care about being able to feed their children. Putin has, whether we like it or not, brought stability and economic growth to Russia.
The sad reality is that Russia had an opportunity to join the free world in the 1990s. Sadly, the wrong man became its president. The result: chaos. The Mafia was in charge everywhere. The economy was controlled by a rich few.
For the average Russian, Putin is a hero.
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I think I’ll revert to a conversation I saw between Bill Maher and a leader of the Russian opposition (can’t remember his name). Bill said that Putin was very popular, and the other man said “How do you know”?
The fact is that it’s very hard to know what Russians on the whole think from the outside. The country is so rife with bias and corruption, that all information is suspect. Mind you, I’m not saying that Putin ISN’T popular, he may well be very popular. Your explanation does make sense, but really we can’t KNOW because those of us on the outside depend on media, and the media is biased in one direction or another. Hell, even journalists trying to find out the honest truth may not find it…I can see myself singing Putins praises if I was in Moscow and placed in front of a camera.
On a more silly note: Does anyone else get the impression that if Putin lost his job tomorrow, he could go back to working for the secret police without missing a beat? He looks like he could assasinate his opponents with his bare hands….in fact he looks like he’s done it, a few times.