plarq
Crazy forever
This seems fishy. Is that he was targeted because of his connection to the think tank?
Ask a Russian
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So, we are going to have parliamentary elections tomorrow. There are 14 options, but only 4 parties have >5% rating, according to the polls.
"United Russia" (A ruling party, Putin-Medvedev) ~40% support
"LDPR", Zhirinovsky, right-wing nationalists, anti-communists ~10%
"CPRF", Zyuganov, communists ~10%
"A Just Russia", social-democrats 5%-10%
There are also a few liberal parties,
"Yabloko" (Social liberalism) ~1%
"Party of Growth" (Liberal conservatism) <1%
"PARNAS" (Liberal democracy, pro-Europeanism) <1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_legislative_election,_2016
A question to everybody - what party would you vote for? I'm still unsure what I'm going to choose, I just know a few parties which I'm certainly not going to support.
"United Russia" (A ruling party, Putin-Medvedev) ~40% support
"LDPR", Zhirinovsky, right-wing nationalists, anti-communists ~10%
"CPRF", Zyuganov, communists ~10%
"A Just Russia", social-democrats 5%-10%
There are also a few liberal parties,
"Yabloko" (Social liberalism) ~1%
"Party of Growth" (Liberal conservatism) <1%
"PARNAS" (Liberal democracy, pro-Europeanism) <1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_legislative_election,_2016
A question to everybody - what party would you vote for? I'm still unsure what I'm going to choose, I just know a few parties which I'm certainly not going to support.
plarq
Crazy forever
Abstain.
But any way, they don't add up to 100%.
But any way, they don't add up to 100%.
Oerdin
Deity
Why do otherwise intelligent and we'll read Russian people buy the lies and corruption Putin is selling? Aren't they aware their country has slipped back into dictatorship?
Verbose
Deity
Usually referred to as Yabloko, making it sound more incomprehensible, but slightly less weird, to western ears.You have a party called the Apple Party?
I don't know enough about them. How are the votes translated into seats?
It's one of the classic liberal parties of the early post-Soviet period, formed in 1993 by Grigory Yavlinsky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabloko
Needless to say, it's not very popular in Russia, only about halfway to the get requisite votes to make the 7% cut-off parliament.
Verbose
Deity
And somehow it strikes no one as perhaps a tad incongrous that Yeltsin isn't standing for office anymore, when making that choice...
Long as the windfall of oil and gas money made most people better off, they really couldnt have cared less. Now I'm guessing there is a dearth of viable alternatives.
They shouldn't. There are 20%-30% of people who abstain.
It has nothing to do with American fruit company.You have a party called the Apple Party?
The name of the party is abbreviation of the founders names (Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin), Ya-b-l
Basically, votes are translated proportionally and there is a 5% cut-off barrier. If you want to know more about each party, you can read wiki page about elections.
Can you please rephrase your answer, what you suggest me to do? Not to vote? Go and overthrow Putin?
So, in Moscow everything is fast and smooth, it took me about 5 minutes to vote. In some other regions people say there are organizational problems like long lines. A few violations were also caught on cameras.
According to Ukrainian news, in Kiev nationalists are picketing Russian embassy preventing Russian citizens from voting. At least one person was beaten, trying to bypass the picket. Right in front of police and journalists.
https://112.ua/kiev/pod-posolstvom-rf-v-kieve-izbili-cheloveka-339464.html
According to Ukrainian news, in Kiev nationalists are picketing Russian embassy preventing Russian citizens from voting. At least one person was beaten, trying to bypass the picket. Right in front of police and journalists.
https://112.ua/kiev/pod-posolstvom-rf-v-kieve-izbili-cheloveka-339464.html
Verbose
Deity
Be concerned that the election has got no real alternatives (for lack of any credible opposition, regardless of how that happened)? A political situation like that will mean the eventual end of democracy, if it hasn't already happened.
Be concerned about the gradual erosion of the institutions of the Russian state and society?
Be concerned about the ever-changing Russian election laws (the recent joys of Russian gerrymandering to favour the incumbent party unless I have been misinformed)?
Should we except you to get engaged and show some social activism over any of it? Might be just unfair, since it's entirely unclear if we would ourselves if the shoe was on the other foot...
Also would anything like that come with any level of potential personal danger? from whom, how much, under what circumstances, if so?
(And that's at least all unrelated to Russia's current foreign policies.)
Is there a point in being concerned about something I cannot change? To be honest, although I think we should have viable opposition, state of democracy in Russia is not in top list of my concerns. And seeing what kind of people get elected in USA (GWB and whoever they elect next), I'm not even sure it would be good for us if we adopt similar system. We might as well elect some populist lunatic, like Zhirinovsky.
I don't feel the situation is so desperate that it needs immediate change. So, my social activism is limited to voting for a "non-incumbent" party. More active forms of activism basically mean joining some kind of opposition. I don't want to affiliate with Russian liberals - I despise most of them as well as ultra-nationalists. I don't despise communists, but I also not completely share their ideology and consider CPRF as largely populist party by now.
plarq
Crazy forever
But the oppositions are mainly liberals, ultranationalists and communists in Russia...
@Red_elk: tell us for who you voted for.
This is hillarious. May I ask you what are the intelligent Americans doing? What next insane war adventure you are going to be draged into with disregard to your opinion while being lied to? For how much more killing of innocent civilians you are willing to pay with your taxes? How much more national debt you can sustain? How much more "patriotic" you want to be. How many more liberties you wish to trade for "security"? Russia seems to be improving over the time actually.
This is hillarious. May I ask you what are the intelligent Americans doing? What next insane war adventure you are going to be draged into with disregard to your opinion while being lied to? For how much more killing of innocent civilians you are willing to pay with your taxes? How much more national debt you can sustain? How much more "patriotic" you want to be. How many more liberties you wish to trade for "security"? Russia seems to be improving over the time actually.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
No Russia is going backwards, its just that the US is going backwards faster.
If the idiots elect another moron into power, then we can expect the US stupidity to resume and the decline of the US to accelerate.
It's good to see that you have watched Forrest Gump.
5% cut-off the more to weed out small parties and give the bigger parties the vote. Interesting.red_elk said:
Oerdin
Deity
That is meaningless as all Putin did was ride the oil bubble and steal ever more as time goes on. Putin hasn't done anything meaningful to reform the underlying rot in Russia's economy and actively made it worse by eliminating the rule of law.
It's good to see that you have watched Forrest Gump.
That's pretty standard in PR systems. Germany uses the same cutoff, for instance. Reading about this, it appears Russia went to a 7% cutoff for a couple of election cycles. I would suspect the goal for raising it then was to keep liberal parties like Yabloko out, but now they poll so low that there's no reason not to just revert it back to 5%.
From what I can see, it seems that Western-style liberalism really does have an approval rate in the low single digits in Russia, thanks to the fallout from the 1990s and Putin's grip over the propaganda machinery. It is kind of interesting to see an electoral system where voting for a liberal party is like voting for a third party in the US, for all the chance they have of getting any representation. Illiberal democracy at its finest!
It's also interesting to see how the Russians finally figured out how to make good propaganda. My impression, which could be wrong, is that Soviet citizens rarely actually believed Pravda or other communist propaganda. Now it appears that state-owned or aligned media are believed in general by most Russians today, to a much greater extent than they believed the Communist propaganda.
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