EDITORIAL: Stunning Failure for Putin at the Polls

EDITORIAL

Stunning Failure for Putin at the Polls

In a jolting humiliation for Vladimir Putin’s “party of power” United Russia, despite relentless vote rigging the party could not muster a national majority in the last week’s regional elections.  As reported by the Moscow Times, the election results are “a serious warning for the party, reflecting an increasing mood to protest in the regions,” said Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.

Even though Putin has purged every significant true opposition party from the ballot, his own party was in effect repudiated by the voters.  And, as Nikolai Petrov reports:  “Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is also the head of United Russia, took a more active role in Sunday’s elections he’s played in any since his own presidential election of 2000.”  So the result was very clearly a personal repudiation of Putin — to the extent the cowardly, lemming-like denizens of Russia are able to achieve such a thing.

EDITORIAL: Appeasement and Shame in Yaroslavl

EDITORIAL

Appeasement and Shame in Yaroslavl

Sergei Mitrokhin. Leonid Gozman. Do you know those names?

Mitrokhin is the obscure leader of the obscure Yabloko party established by Gigori Yavlinsky, and Gozman is the even more obscure leader of the even more obscure Right Cause party, successor to the Union of Right Forces established by Boris Nemtsov.

Neither gentleman plays any significant role in the current Russian opposition movement led by Boris Nemtsov and Garry Kasparov. Neither party holds as much as a single seat in the Russian legislature.  So naturally, both were invited to the Kremlin’s sham “modernization” conference in Yaroslavl last week (200 miles north of — that is, very far from — Moscow) so the Kremlin could prove how liberal and open and democratic it is.   Neither offered any serious direct criticism of Putin or challenged his authority in any way.

Neither Kasparov nor Nemtsov nor any other serious opposition figure, of course, was on the guest list.  And, of course, the Americans on hand did not say a single word about their absence.

Yabloko throws in the Towel

Oleg Kozlovsky, whose wife has just delivered his first child (congratulations, m0lodets!) writing on the Huffington Post:

Yabloko, which had claimed to be the last registered democratic party in Russia, has officially broke up with the opposition. Its convention adopted a resolution last week that bans Yabloko’s members from participating in any opposition organizations, movements or coalitions.

Kremlin’s most hated “troublemakers” like The Other Russia and Solidarnost are explicitly mentioned in the resolution. Those who don’t leave these organizations within three months will be automatically expelled from the party, regardless if they hold high posts.