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07.11.07
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Disinterested Observation
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Comment by Georgy Bovt
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Russians Seem Completely Unconcerned about Proving that Elections are Free and Fair
Foreign observers will come to the December Duma elections in Russia, but there will be only about 300 of them, as opposed to the 1,165 that attended in 2003. Despite these reduced numbers, their coming has already caused a scandal and President Vladimir Putin personally had to interfere. First the Central Election Commission held off sending invitations to the observers; then it was announced that the number of observers will be much smaller than at the previous elections. The problem was solved only after the leaders of European countries expressed their concern to Putin during the recent EU-Russia summit in Portugal. However, the problem as a whole still remains.
It would be surprising if the upcoming elections did not cause the relationship between Russia and European organizations to worsen. Many things have changed in Russia since the parliamentary elections of 2003. In line with the newly developed theory of “sovereign democracy,” Russian authorities tend to take offense when foreigners discuss Russia’s internal problems. Today, the main criterion for deciding whether a human rights advocacy organization in Russia is “appropriate” is the source of its financing: if it receives foreign grants, then it is “an agent of foreign influence.” Russia’s political relationship with the European Union is at its lowest since the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s relationship with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is even worse. This organization used to send the majority of the observers that attended Russian elections, but this time it is going to send only 70 people. Moscow has openly doubted whether this relationship needs to be preserved at all.
Among Russia’s elite, the prevailing opinion today is that the West needs the institution of foreign observers only to put political and propagandistic pressure on Russia, whose increasingly independent behavior on the international arena – especially in the area of energy – seriously worries the West. The way Russia’s elites feel about any foreign observations and comments on Russian affairs – whether they are connected with policy on freedom of speech, human rights or electoral rights – resembles the popular attitude during the Soviet era more and more. Any such activity is seen as “interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.” There is another circumstance that the Russian elites find to be insulting and debasing the sovereign dignity of the state: the fact that a significantly smaller number of foreign observers is sent to observe elections in the United States or European countries. Today, Moscow is very sensitive to any, even symbolic, display of such “inequality,” and reacts to it by maintaining that the political regime in Russia is no worse than that of Western democracies.
The first time in history when foreign observers were present at an election was in 1857, when diplomats from France, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey monitored the course of the plebiscite in Moldavia and Walachia. As a result of this vote, these two regions were freed from the administrative control of Austria-Hungary, and, in 1859, they joined to form a new state – Romania.
After World War II and the foundation of the UN, international observers became a permanent institution. The practice increased in importance in the 1950s and 1960s as colonial empires collapsed as well as after the end of the Cold War. According to tradition, the observers arrive to witness elections only at the invitation of the current regime. A different practice is used when a new state is being formed: in 1999 the UN independently sent international observers to monitor the referendum in East Timor, which was trying to gain independence from Indonesia.
Incidentally, the first time international observers were present at a presidential election in the United States was only in 2004, on the initiative of the Democratic Party, which lost the 2000 presidential election by a minimum of votes. At the time, the OSCE observers did not find any serious violations.
In my opinion, the main problem with foreign observers at Russian elections today is not how many of them will come, which international organizations will send them, who will pay for their stay in Russia and/or whether they will come at all; the problem is that today all initiatives that pay special attention to the observance of democratic procedures during Russian elections come from outside of Russia, not from inside it.
Not one of the 11 parties registered to participate in the upcoming elections expressed any wish to attract “unbiased foreigners” to, perhaps, “expose” United Russia, which is obviously dominating the political field. There is no reason to do this. The situation is obvious to everyone: this party is simply fated to win by a huge margin, owing to both its full access to the administrative resource and its domination in the information space and as a result of the multiple manipulations of the Russian political system in the last few years. However, the Russian electorate itself does not seem to be very worried about carefully observing democratic procedures in the upcoming elections; neither does it seem to care about making sure that the competition between the parties is fair. And while this indifference prevails, the problem of democracy in Russia will remain mostly a topic of international discussion between Russian and foreign politicians, and not at all a topic for internal discussions in Russia.
What will also remain is the striking contrast between the international scandal over the Russian government’s treatment of foreign observers and the internal calm, or even apathy, displayed in Russia on all levels of the society, including the lowest, philistine, level.
Georgy Bovt is a Moscow-based political analyst. |
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