Re: Vlad the Lad.

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:03:26 -0000, "Glenallan" <robt.black@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

The omly major leader who appears to have the
unswerving confidence of his people appears
to be Vladimir Putin.

Makes you wonder. !?

G

I give up.

Read these reports:

The Guardian:
Dirty tricks help Putin to landslide Millions coerced into voting for
Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia in parliamentary elections
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Telegraph:

President Vladimir Putin's party swept towards victory in a
parliamentary election that critics have dismissed as a sham.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Times of London:
Vladimir Putin storms to victory amid loud claims of foul play and
vote-rigging
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to the Guardian:
Early results from the Central Election Commission indicated the party
was leading with 63% of votes, with the Communist party trailing a
distant second on 11.5%. Two other partners looked set to scrape into
the State Duma: the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of
Russia, with 10.6%, and Fair Russia, another Kremlin-linked party,
with 7.1%. Exit polls indicated similar figures.

Turnout was expected to be high at over 60%, compared with 56% in the
last Duma election in 2003.

Observers said the poll and run-up campaign were the least fair in the
entire post-Soviet period. Thousands of public sector workers have
complained they were threatened with losing jobs or bonuses if they
did not cast their ballot for the pro-Kremlin United Russia.

While it has a genuinely large public following based on Putin's high
personal ratings, monitors said the result had been inflated by up to
20% through a campaign of intimidation and negative PR.

Liliya Shibanova, director of Golos, a monitoring organisation with
2,000 observers across the country, told the Guardian: "We have seen
an unprecedented attempt to manipulate the vote. There has been mass
forced voting and a raft of other violations."

Kremlin aides were known to be desperate to orchestrate a crushing win
for United Russia as an endorsement for Putin to stay on as de facto
leader of the country despite having to give up the presidency next
spring. The president headed the party's list in yesterday's vote to
elect 450 members of the lower house.

The run-up to polling day was marred by claims of widespread dirty
tricks. Shibanova said many state workers and students were obliged to
take absentee ballots and vote at their place of work or study. Bosses
and teaching staff then hinted or told voters that they would lose
jobs, fail exams or be kicked out of dormitories if they did not vote
for United Russia. In some regions up to 54 times more absentee
ballots were issued than during the last Duma elections in 2003, she
said.

Opposition groups reported that police had arrested dozens of their
activists. Those detained included leading members of The Other
Russia, the anti-Kremlin coalition headed by the former chess champion
Garry Kasparov.

Dmitry Krayukhin, a human rights activist and independent election
monitor from the town of Oryol, said police arrested him on Saturday.
"I was walking down the street when a young man pushed into me and
started yelling," he said. "I immediately realised it was a
provocation. Suddenly two or three militia guys came out from a car
and surrounded me. I was then taken down the station and charged with
stealing a mobile phone."

The police released him only when Amnesty International and other
human rights group intervened, Krayukhin said. But the local head of
The Other Russia, Georgy Sarkisyan, was still in prison and unable to
vote after police had arrested him for hooliganism, he added.

Opposition leaders also questioned the size of the turnout and said
the huge voting figures were the result of administrative fraud.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent MP, said the number of absentee
ballots from his Siberian constituency had shot up from 1,500 in 2003
to 20,000.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist party leader, said the election had
been "the most irresponsible and dirty" since the Soviet breakup in
1991.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One independent exit poll in the far eastern port of Vladivostok
suggested that United Russia had done worse than expected, polling
only 40%. (My note - Vladivostok is Russia's cowboy country, where all
the hard men live. Many have served time in gulags and on release are
as often as not refused permission to return to their homes - ever.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Communist party also complained that election officials were
touring flats and houses with a mobile ballot box to boost the United
Russia vote. "They didn't make any effort to tick people off the list
or stop them voting twice," said Artyom Skatov, a party spokesman in
Novosibirsk.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Last night Grigory Golosov, a professor in the faculty of political
sciences and sociology at St Petersburg's European University,
described the vote as "fair but not free".

The message was loud and clear. If you don't vote for Putin, don't
expect to get your pay when you're fired and don't waste your time
trying to find work anywhere else.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My notes:
Nobody thinks that the deaths of anti-Putin journalists were
accidental. Nobody thinks that the blowing up of buildings in central
Moscow were the work of Chechens. The techniques are not new; they
have former KGB written all over them and seem to be reading from the
same manual that got Hitler into power, even though he never won a
majority vote. Putin will get his votes because it's too dangerous for
ordinary people to vote for anyone else except the Communist Party..

.

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