Thousands of protesters reportedly rallied in Moscow today, protesting against the ruling United Russia Party and accusing it of fraud in the elections process. The second-place finishing Communist Party claimed thousands of credible reports of vote manipulation.
Top US and British officials responded to the reports with calls for a “full investigation” of the election process, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claiming that the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe had also raised questions.
Interestingly, despite the allegations, the United Russia Party still lost massive numbers of seats in the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and now holds a bare minimum majority, having gained just 50 percent of the popular vote.
The loss is a significant blow to United Russia’s popular support, but it does not seem that any other party gained a serious mandate in the election, with the seats they lost splitting between the Communists, the Socialist “Just Russia” bloc, and the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democrats.
Democracy is not an absolute truth.
Not everyone needs it, if anyone needs it at all.
Putin should abolish democracy in Russia.
The usual suspects, the "National endowment for democracy" the "freedom house" and of course CIA have been trying a colour-coded "revolution", as they did with a start in Serbia to every eastern country, in every Russian election for the last 20 years. It usually don´t work at all since they have had a hard time convincing Russian and diaspora-Russians proud of their country's progress and restoration to a super power, otherwise. Buying people off with fancy mobile phones and twitter accounts doesn´t work either so this time they seem to have gone for a hugh variety of obscure groups of people…
International observers including Britain have praised the Russian election process.
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/05/61585184.html
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/05/61580997.html
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/05/61568988.html
Hanging chads anyone? The pot calling the kettle black when in the US, the election of that mass mudering maniac, Bush, were stolen on both occasions.
Here in Canada our Prime Minister’s party won a majority government with just under 40 percent of the popular vote in elections this year…which is actually very high…in the last two elections he only got about 30 percent…
In last year’s UK election David Cameron was elected Prime Minister with just 36 percent of the popular vote…which means that the country’s leader was approved by only about 1 out of 3 people who voted…
In 2009 German election Angela Merkel was elected with 34 percent of the popular vote…
So Russia’s democracy is bad when the winning party “only” gets 50 percent…?
I would be willing to bet that there has NEVER been a Western parliamentary election since WW2 where the winning party has ever won 50 percent in the first round of voting…NEVER…
The way this story is being reported is simply a joke…it is simply parroting of the corporate media anti-Putin propaganda…
And you forgot to mention George W. Bush's elections, both of them. Those were a beaut!
Who are we to question the affairs of Russia?
Someone should switch off the autopilot for MSM. US/UK mouthpieces should shut up and tiptoe unless they believe communists and Jirinovski are more flexible than Putin's party. Last elections were devastating for the western pets in Russia. The trend is so obviously antiwestern there the politicos & propagandists should think twice before blabbering their out of time and out of place "concerns".
Yes, they did steal votes from communists, socialists and Zhirnovsky's nationalists. As for the prefered "liberals", they are actually too lazy to bother with having a platform, having a unified party, having to campaign. They did not have any votes to steal from. But these are the ones on the streets, as it is so much more fun having to get on camera, and play up to press. They off to some warm spot for vodtka.
Now that Hillary has adopted a "Buddha" like hairdo for her recent Asian trip she will surely have some universal observation about "democratic elections" to warm our hearts.
What are they gonna do, send in NATO too?
BTW, I'm worried too…about the UK and US elections. And I'm not just talking about this coming round but the past ones too, particularly, the 2000 and 2004 ones. It appears that more and more countries are adopting the RepubliCON electoral model.
Can't see why Obama would be upset. It sounded like the perfect Chicago-style election to me.
Remember, this is from the guy who loves democracy so much that he just bullied everyone else out of challenging him in a primary and letting dem voters have a say in how he's been doing. At least Putin had an election.
I guess the US idea of a “democratic” election is the kind that keeps Mishiko Saakashvili in power in Georgia. First he overthrew President Shevarnadze, who was pro-Russian. The next election he put out arrest warrants on all the opposition candidates. This time he revoked the citizenship of his Georgian-born opponent. But each time Mishiko is a guest on Fox News, Neil Cavuto introduces him as the “democratically-elected President of Georgia.”