Putin Gets Stuffed (Along with his Ballots)

It’s not surprising that Putin lost his 2/3 majority in parliament today. Many people have turned against him and his party for many reasons: his inability to improve living standards, deal with corruption and reform the military, police, health and education systems.

But perhaps most damning: his inability to get more than 50% of the vote despite controlling all the media, silencing the opposition, stuffing thousands of ballots, blackmailing scores of regional governors, and even detaining the head election monitor! Under similar conditions, his Communist predecessors never allowed themselves to win by anything less than 95%.

Decisive proof, if any more were needed, of his and United Russia’s total incompetence.
After all, this must have been Russia’s dirtiest parliamentary elections even by the country’s world-leading standards of virtual politics, and they still managed to screw it up.

*United Russia apparatchiks working in industry, schools and local bureaucracies DEMANDED THEIR SUBORDINATES SHOW THEM CAMERAPHONE PHOTOS OF THEIR BALLOTS AS PROOF THAT THEY VOTED “THE RIGHT WAY”. No joke! Who says Russia has no transparency??!

*Several regional governors threaten voters that their benefits would be cut and that industry would leave if they do not vote UR.

*A Gazeta.ru journalist infiltrated an organised ballot stuffing ring on the outskirts of Moscow
*Independent election monitoring group Golos (“Voice”, or “Vote”) found over 9000 different electoral violations and logged them onto an interactive online map.

* Shortly after that, Golos’s website is taken down by a cyberattack; Golos’s director Lilya Shibanova is detained at an airport and her laptop is confiscated.

Will the election become Putin’s Waterloo? Who knows? But one thing’s for sure: Russians can endure many things, but one thing we can’t take is incompetent authoritarianism.