Russian Election

Congrats to Dmitry Medvedev on winning the presidency. He really had some…*cough…tough competition. Let’s take a look at his opponents:

 Gennady Zyuganov (Communist): The guy wrote a book of political jokes and handed them out to a group of experts seeing him (I heard they were lame too), and he even offered his autograph. If the whole Communist thing didn’t turn voters away, I’m sure his lame jokes did.

 Vladimir Zhirinovsky:  The guy freakin’ flat out said he wanted to extend the Russian Empire into Asia a few years back. He wanted to “so Russian soldiers can wash their shirts in the Indian Ocean.” Yeah, that’ll get you a lot of friends, and besides, he’s been around for too long. He’s old news.

Andrei Bogdanov A.K.A. “The Right Candidate”: This left wing nutjob advocated liberal moves like joining the EU. What kind of self-respecting former Communist would vote for someone like that? I’m just joking, but I heard that people had trouble making sense of his views.

Dmitry Medvedev (Kremlin candidate): He obviously did something right (or at least not as many things wrong).

Overall, Putin was a fairly popular president, but I believe there were a few underlying problems citizens had with his administration. First, I think the Russian citizens are a little bit resentful that he didn’t spread the oil wealth around a little more. In addition, there is a growing suspicion that Russia is being run by the corrupt political elite, I don’t exactly know why. Voter turnout wasn’t the highest either; rather than being informed on candidates and policies, citizens were just told that voting was part of their civic duty. Hopefully, Medvedev will be able to expand on the positive aspects of Putin’s presidency and improve life for all Russians. After all, Putin and Medvedev have a very close relationship, and since Putin will remain active in government, the two will be able to work together to rally support for new legislation. In terms of the world, we’ll still have to wait and see. One great thing to see would be to see Russia join the EU, but that’s just wishful thinking. Medvedev’s policies and how well he works with the U.S. will be crucial as well.

One more thing I thought was really cool about the elections. The government was indirectly trying to intimidate people into voting (from a Russian political expert):

“And most telling of all, when an activist from the Other Russia movement who was distributing newspapers at a metro station got into an argument with officials who wanted to move him on, members of the public instantly and silently took his side.

I watched in amazement as they defiantly and purposefully pushed the official aside, to take a paper one by one – their way of telling the authorities what they thought of this bid to intimidate.”

~ by edwardrmeow on March 6, 2008.