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14.02.08
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A Familiar Patter Or A New Design?
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By Yelena Biberman
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The refusal of Europe’s main election watchdog, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), to monitor the March 2 presidential election in Russia did not rob the Russian officials of their sleep. Instead, it presented them with the opportunity to make an important announcement. Their harsh response to ODIHR not only undermined the Warsaw-based organization, but also served to reassert Russia’s sovereignty. As far as the Russian establishment is concerned, it clearly communicated the end of Russia’s transitory period.
Moscow’s numerous disputes with the European monitors have largely been influenced by Russia’s two competing basic needs: the search for international legitimacy and the need for national sovereignty. As Russia gained leverage in global affairs, the magnitude of the international legitimacy dimension as determined by the election monitors shrunk. Not surprisingly, in response to the Feb. 7 ODIHR boycott, chairman of the State Duma international affairs committee Konstantin Kosachev was quick to rebuff by pointing out that the only significant opinion is that of the Russian audience. “The elections will be held not for foreign observers, but for the Russian ones, and for the Russian political system,” Itar-Tass quoted him as saying. “The absence of some observers will not harm the legitimacy of a yet-to-be elected president.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also responded by emphasizing Russia’s self-determination. “A country which respects itself accepts no ultimatums,” he said in reference to the ODIHR demands for an increased amount of time and monitors in Russia prior to the election. Lavrov also suggested that it was time to reform the organization.
The chosen path
The underlying cause of the latest election monitoring dispute between Moscow and the West does not pertain to the two sides’ divergent beliefs about the quality of Russian elections. Both realize that the March 2 election will be neither free nor fair. The tension originates in the fact that the West still perceives Russia as a state in transition – a willing student of its most cherished principles. However, as far as the Russian side is concerned, the transition period is over. The ruling elite argue that President Vladimir Putin has put Russia on its rightful path and all that is left to do is to follow that path. Hence, the task of ensuring continuity takes precedence over strengthening the democratic processes inside the country.
“As you well remember, the country was in a very difficult situation eight years ago. We had gone through a default and people had seen their savings devalued. Terrorists unleashed a large-scale civil war before our very eyes,” Putin reminisced in his Feb. 8 State Council speech.
The West has not ignored Russia’s reemergence under Putin. In its 2007 Person of the Year article, Time magazine told its readers that Putin “found a country on the verge of becoming a failed state. With dauntless persistence, a sharp vision of what Russia should become and a sense that he embodied the spirit of Mother Russia, Putin has put his country back on the map.”
Indeed, Russia has not become a failed state, but the results of the transformation unleashed in the mid-1980s continue to puzzle and concern most Western Kremlin watchers. Unwilling to prolong the painful democratic experiment, much of the Russian society has settled for the stabilizing achievements of the Putin regime. As one of the most popular Russian proverbs states, “Better a tomtit in your hand than a crane in the sky.”
At the same time, according to the Kremlin-connected political analyst and director of the Institute for Political Studies in Moscow Sergey Markov, Putin has become more than just a president. Through his “acts of bravery,” he has turned into Russia’s national leader.
The recovery and further progress driven by Putin’s “sharp vision of what Russia should become” convinced a large segment of the Russian political establishment that the transition is complete. Russia is back, and all it needs now is order, stability, and to be left alone (in a word, sovereignty). The type of order needed is one that ensures that certain rules are still being honored, such as the rule that the president is not allowed to run for three consecutive terms; the type of stability required is one that may only be achieved by executive continuity.
The task of maintaining stability while ensuring order was undertaken by staging, first, a parliamentary and then a presidential election with a predictable outcome. All criticism of the election by foreign observers was turned into criticism of Russia’s self-determination. Moreover, the majority of Russians already support the so-called Putin plan and the Kremlin’s choice of Dmitry Medvedev. Any Western complaints about the conduct of the election procedure would thus irritate the Russian public and any Western condemnation of the outcome would be seen as irrelevant.
Polls show that most Russians are weary of foreign election monitors. When asked whom they would trust if the results of the election were contested, the majority of Russians (over 60 percent) said that they would trust the Russian Central Election Commission more than any other source, says Valery Fedorov, director general of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM). No more than 15 percent of those polled prefer monitors from the international, European and CIS organizations.
“We are being pressured to relinquish our sovereignty,” protested Alexey Pushkov, editor-in-chief and anchor of the Russian television news and analysis program Post Scriptum. Pushkov noted that the United States has refused the Russian offer to monitor U.S. elections. “There is a double-standard here. We are being forced to yield to the types of conditions that our Western partners do not find acceptable for themselves,” he said.
In the same spirit, member of the Central Election Commission Igor Borisov complained that ODIHR wanted to bring in observers from a number of African and Asian countries. “We cannot allow ourselves to be evaluated by those who come from countries whose number of election cycles is much fewer than ours,” Borisov said.
Moscow’s rhetoric toward international monitoring of Russia’s 2008 presidential election reveals a consolidation in one of the major aspects of Russian identity. Believing to have overcome the Gerschenkronian bond of backwardness with a powerful national leader charting the course, the Russian ruling elite is taking Russia in a new, independent direction. Whether this direction is just the modern manifestation of the old pattern remains to be seen, but the period of Russia’s transition to democracy appears to be over. |
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