Saturday, December 02, 2023

What ‘winning’ an election means in Putin’s Russia

Recommendable!

When will the lethargic Russian people finally get rid of their last czar, the megalomaniac and war criminal Putin the Terrible!

"As expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin has unofficially begun his campaign for re-election ahead of the presidential election scheduled for 17 March 2024. Exhibitions celebrating the Putin era are already on display, and cultural performances are set to tour Russia. Surprisingly, he has yet to officially announce his candidacy.
The election outcome is, of course, preordained. It’s an open secret that Russian elections are heavily ‘managed’ and political opposition has been suppressed for decades. ...
Russian elections are theatrical, designed to create the perception of political popularity and a democratic mandate. John le Carre, in his novel Russia house, quipped about the failure of Mikhail Gorbachev’s more ‘open’ glasnost approach that ‘every democratic wish is filtered upwards by means of consultation at all levels, then dumped into the Neva’. ...
The Kremlin describes its approach to governing as ‘sovereign democracy’. The term was first attributed to prominent Putin supporter Vladislav Surkov in 2006. It justifies the centralisation of power and democratic interference on nationalist grounds. As argued by Russia expert Angela Stent, it’s essentially ‘democratic rhetoric’ with ‘undemocratic intent’. ...
This is partially based on the regime’s understanding of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which Putin has lamented as a ‘major humanitarian tragedy’ and a ‘geopolitical catastrophe’, and the impact of the August 1991 protests in overcoming the conservative KGB coup in favour of Boris Yeltsin. ..."

What ‘winning’ an election means in Putin’s Russia | The Strategist

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