First thoughts on the Duma elections

The results are dribbling in, and it doesn’t seem there are any real surprises. The first thing that is clear is that this new legislative arrangement is hopeless. The idea of nationwide proportional representation – with a high seven percent threshold for seats – might work for a small and compact country like Israel, but it is useless in a country as vast as Russia. Further, the rules governing news coverage in the weeks leading up to the election were convoluted and routinely ignored, especially by the state-run television channels. And finally, reports of “irregularities” have been frequent and widespread enough to raise serious concerns, but with no independent monitors on hand, we’ll never know the truth.

Putin’s United Russia party actually had a pretty tough job going into today. Not only did they need to win big, they needed huge turnout. But as I’m sure they realized in the past few weeks, it is much easier to alienate people from politics than to motivate them to actually get off their ass for you. Turnout figures so far (it is still relatively early) seem all over the board. In St. Petersburg I’ve heard it was only about 40 percent, suggesting most people up there were sane enough to pass on this exercise (many people in the past few weeks came to the cynical conclusion that the best way to make your point was to stay home because it was already decided). In Chechnya, the reported turnout is a hilarious 99.12 percent. United Russia’s proportion nationwide right now is a little over 60 percent, which frankly has to be somewhat disappointing. But the margin is enough to serve their purpose: giving Putin and Co. a leg to stand on as they tamper with the constitution or however else they will choose to keep in power in the next few years.

The nationalist Liberal Democratic Party is now at about nine percent, which was easy to foresee. Vladimir Zhirinovsky is easy to imagine as that guy in many working class bars who sits in the corner and fulminates on whatever comes to mind from moment to moment. This loudmouth usually has a bunch of dimwits around him who hang on his every word as he explains how the Jews control international banking or whatever. Zhirinovsky proves that this mentality can work on a national level as well. But this guy, when it comes down to it, is ultimately a coward. In the next Duma we can expect him to belly-up and go along with whatever Putin tells him to do– just like this heroic iconoclast did in the last two Dumas.

The great mystery and scandal we don’t know about yet is “A Just Russia,” which is presently hovering just on the right side of the seven percent mark. It is certain they are going to stay there as more votes are counted. I knew the fix was in last week when I saw leader Sergei Mironov on one of the Rossiya channel debates. Considering how badly beaten up they’d been over this fall – defections and Putin dissing them so dramatically being the standouts – Mironov looked unusually relaxed days before judgment day. Frankly, I can’t figure how this gang can exist without some artificial help. An opposition party that is unquestioningly loyal to Putin still makes little sense. Who votes for them? Seriously , I’d like to meet one because I can’t figure it out. I imagine they must be pretty kinky – they want to lick Putin’s boots while he looks down and mocks them. Sounds like s&m.

The only real interesting thing is that the Communists came in second with 11 percent. I suspected they would pull through, perhaps with fewer votes. As it stands, they are the only real opposition, and have probably tapped the very large pool of angry people – poor pensioners, underpaid workers – who are not getting any of the benefits of these alleged boom times. Tonight, Gennady Zyganov suggested that they intend to continue to act like an opposition, raising the question of voting irregularities and the strange way that it seems the results are coming in a mechanically predetermined fashion. Today’s Communists aren't quite the same dead-enders we remember from the 90s. They appear to represent a very large group of people that is only going to keep growing in the next few years – much faster than that famous “small but growing middle class.”