Three Hundred and Fifty
By Sean at 7 November, 2007, 2:52 am
350. That’s the number of foreign election observers Russia plans on having monitor the Duma elections in December. 350 is about 700 observers less than than elections four years ago. The reason was simple explained Central Elections Commissioner Vladimir Churov. Having observers at all 95,000 of Russia polling stations would amount to foreign interference. “Tell me where in any international or internal (Russian) document it is written that the legitimacy of the elections depends on the number of international observers,” he said at a press conference announcing the slashing of election observers on Monday. Well true. After all, Russia has its own election monitors in the form of especially trained Nashi activists. Plus Churov said that invitations will be sent out to “colleagues” from countries well known for their fair elections: Jordan, Spain, Italy, Mongolia, Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine” in addition to more palatable countries like Britain, Germany, France, and Finland. Sounds like the elections will be fun.
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From a political perspective, this was a savvy move. This is a high-stakes election that the OSCE was likely to declare ‘unfair’ regardless of the number of observers. Why should Russia facilitate criticism that will be made no matter what? In fact, the OSCE need only send one observer to serve its purposes.
Are you saying elections will be botched no matter what or that OSCE is biased no matter what? Just curious.
Botched Cyrill? C’mon get with the lingo. You mean “managed.”
But seriously, the Russians are in a pickle because orgs like the OSCE would declare the elections problematic at best. At least there is no doubt in my mind. Partially because the elections will be fixed in a variety of ways, partially because crying about “democracy” is also a foreign policy tool of the West. So in a way both sides will be right. The Russian elections will hardly be fair and the West will use that as a way to crack Russia. The whole thing is a mobius strip if you ask me.
When you think about it, Jesse is right. There only need to be one observer since he will only be stating the obvious. No one is going to be surprised to find out that the elections will be manipulated from above.
I’m impressed that Poland have been specifically invited to send observers, given the loving relationship between the two countries.
Or are they coming as a part of the OSCE mob?
How many outside monitors were involved with the 2004 US elections? Anyone have a number on that?
I believe that prior to 2004, the US had no outside election monitoring, other than domestic pollsters (if you would consider them election monitors).
I seem to recall that Poland most recently refused any OSCE election monitors in their October elections, calling them inappropriate.
To be honest, I’m not clear on what mechanism is to be used to “manage” the Russian elections. They have seemed pretty well managed already, via news media, etc. Are we indicating it will be a case of “vote early, vote often” or that people will be “influenced” to vote in a particular fashion or …?
I don’t think the Kremlin has any need to manage the election. 1) local elites will do that themselves. 2) UR is gonna win anyway. I do expect the losers to complain about it in any event, whether it actually happens or not.
On one level, I think the notion of international election monitors is a bit absurd. Maybe if they came from some impartial supernational body, but they don’t. I know that when the Celts offered to monitor the elections to our Senate, we chased those goofy blue-skins out of the Empire at gladiuspoint.
At last, I’ve figured out why the mighty Roman Empire fell… couldn’t figure out the difference between Celts and Smurfs!
Who are these Smurfs of which you speak? A new barbarian tribe from the German wildlands hurling itself in hopeless rage against the unbreakable Roman line?
Anywat, it does not really matter. How many times must I have to explain this… all barbarians and their quaint customs are essentially the same. Celt, Gaul, Smurf — what’s the difference really?
(Actually I think it is the Gauls who paint their skins blue, not the Celts. Maybe both. In any case it will not be long before they are tame Imperial subjects in good, wholesome Roman togas and clean soaped skin from a good Roman bath. Even a Roman’s servants must be clean after all — have you ever had the misfortune of smelling a Celt up close? Sweet Jove and Juno!)
Apparently, 2004 was the first time the OSCE monitored US presidential elections, but the organization sent 11 observers to Florida during the 2002 midterm elections (http://www.whitehouse.gov/interactive/wilkinson_osce.html).
OSCE sent 100 observers to the US for the 2004 presidential election (http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2004/09/3655_en.pdf)
Why should Russia facilitate criticism that will be made no matter what?
By the same logic, the Bush Administration should bar reporters from the NYT (and other “liberal” press outlets) from White House press conferences – after all, they will criticize “no matter what.” There may be a few understandable reasons why Russia has done this, but what it really shows is that they feel moneyed enough these days to not care what “the West” has to say about their political system.
Anyway, if I’m not mistaken, the biggest outcry was about the OSCE contingent of observers specifically, which is being reduced from 350 or so to 50 or so (often forgotten in this whole discussion is that Russia is an OSCE member also). I was actually somewhat surprised that the OSCE agreed to send observers at all under those conditions, although it’s probably the right decision at the end of the day. It will definitely be interesting to see how everything goes.
Kommersant has a fairly speculative article suggesting that the “West” will proclaim that the Duma elections were free & fair in exchange for Russian concessions on the CFE Treaty.
OK, here are the details of the numbers of observers being allowed this year as opposed to in 2003 (from here):
On October 30 the chairman of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC), Vladimir Churov, announced that up to 400 foreign observers would be invited to observe the elections; and of that total, only 50 observers would be accepted in the OSCE/ODIHR mission. Invitations were sent out on October 30, thus making it impossible for the OSCE/ODIHR to perform its normal long-term observation function ahead of the voting.
The remaining 350 invitations are being sent to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the central electoral commissions of several CIS member countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, several West European countries, and for some reason the Jordanian electoral commission (Itar-Tass, October 30).
Russia’s 2003 parliamentary elections were monitored by a total of 1,165 foreign observers, including 450 from the OSCE (nine times more than now). And they received the invitations in mid-September that year, almost three months ahead of the December 9, 2003 poll (Moscow Times, October 26; Interfax, October 30).
Also, I’m not sure (joking aside) that Nashi or other Russian groups will be able to do any sort of monitoring either:
The NGO Golos, one of Russia’s leading election-monitoring groups (funded by the European Commission and USAID), points out, “400 foreign observers is a very low figure for Russia[‘s] huge territory and 95,000 polling stations”; and, furthermore, “The delay in sending invitations is a major problem. Campaign monitoring is particularly important because most violations usually take place during the campaign.” Moreover, Russian NGOs are no longer allowed to send observers to polling stations (Interfax, October 30).
I’m impressed that Poland have been specifically invited to send observers, given the loving relationship between the two countries.
If Churov is inviting pre-selected “colleagues” and knows their sympathies beforehand, I don’t think it’s all that impressive.
OSCE sent 100 observers to the US for the 2004 presidential election
So, Russia is getting 3-1/2 times the number of OSCE monitors for a population that is half the size of the US and largely concentrated in big cities or urban areas.
I know there are some arguments regarding a history of fair elections, etc. But I’m not really feeling this is such a terrible thing.
Washington ProFile recently had a long piece about the history of election monitoring. Comment #400 for me, and I’m out.