Daily Archives: March 4, 2008

Open letter to: Открытое письмо:

Vladimir Putin, President of Russian Federation Vladimir Churov, Chairman of Central Election Commission of Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation

Gentlemen, I have no doubt that you are well aware that the free expression of the will of free citizens via free democratic elections can never result in 99.4% of the votes being cast for one party with a turnout of 99.5% of the voters.

Now obviously that is only impossible where there is open, transparent political competition between electoral candidates, with equal opportunities for public campaigning, where there is no administrative pressure on individuals and where one finds impeccable honesty and scrupulous accuracy from the election commissions.

Yet all these are surely the crucial conditions for democratic electoral procedure?

No need to prove to you that these very 99.4% votes “for” provide incontrovertible evidence of vote-rigging. You know that as well as I ..read more

My latest contribution to Pajamas Media “Why Putvedev?” is up. There isn’t much new in it for frequent readers of this blog. Hopefully, it will give a wider audience a different opinion about the Russian Presidential Elections. Also I highly recommend Andrew Wilson’s analysis, “Russia’s Post-election Balance” on Open Democracy. It seems that we share some similar opinions.

Every genre of the entertainment world has its own award shows. Theater has the Tony. Movies the Oscars. Music the Grammys. Why not elections? I bet the Russian election is a cesspool of some classic moments. So . . .

For his role in “Take him out . . . And shoot the scoundrel!” the best actor award goes to . . . Vladimir Zhirinovsky!

If anyone else has any Russian Presidential gems send them to awards@seansrussiablog.org. Nominations can be text, video, audio, document, anything. I’ll try to organize a panel of Russia blogger judges. Maybe it is damn time to have an awards.

Here are the categories:

Best Actor Best Speaker Best Line Craziest Best Propaganda Best Whiner

Best Villain Best Hero Best English Article Best Russian Article Stalin Prize Lenin Prize