Belarus-2010 vs Russia-2012

On December 20, 2010, a thousands-strong crowd was protesting against fraudulent Presidential elections in Belarus. After some 100 people tried to storm a government building, Lukashenko’s riot police attacked the crowd, many were badly beated, hundreds arrested. Criminal investigation started that allowed to prosecute the rally leaders. USA and EU swiftly condemned Lukashenko and implemented sanctions against his regime.

On May 6, 2012, thousands were protesting in Moscow against fraudulent Presidential elections in Russia. After several hundred tried to break through a police line, Putin’s riot police attacked the crowd, many were badly beaten, hundreds arrested. Criminal investigation started and two opposition leaders Alexey Navalny and Sergey Udaltsov questioned. In the following days, hundreds more were arrested. Meanwhile, American and European ambassadors took part in Putin’s inauguration. President Obama called Putin, congratulated him on the Victory Day, discussed military and economic cooperation, but didn’t mention human rights.

Khodorkovsky Got New Prison Term

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev sentenced to 13.5 years imprisonment for allegedly stealing all the oil their own company, Yukos, has produced. This is almost exactly the term (minus 6 months) that the prosecutor requested. The sentence is combined with their current prison term, so they will stay in prison until 2017 (if they survive long enough in prison camps). The truth is, however, as Khodorkovsky mentioned, they will stay behind bars as long as Putin is in power.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky commented the sentence briefly, saying:

Platon Lebedev and I show you an example: do not hope to be protected by a court from a bureaucrat in Russia. The [Central Electoral Commission Chief Vladimir] Churov Rule [“Putin is always right”] works. But we don’t lose heart and wish the same to our friends.

Putin Calls to “Bean” Protesters with Batons

Kommersant publishes a new interview with Putin, where the dictator comments on opposition rallies:

Look, all our opponents support a Rechtsstaat. What is a Rechtsstaat? It is obedience to the existing law. What does the existing law say about [Dissenters’] Marches? You need to get a permission from the authorities. Got it? Go and protest. Otherwise you don’t have this right. If you go out without having the right, get beaned with a baton. That’s it!

Putin manages to lie three times in this short passage:

1. Rechtsstaat (“правовое государство”) is not just about obedience to every law. It is also about laws being fair, about everybody being equal before the law, about having independent judiciary system etc. Do we have anything of this? No. The government adopts any laws they want, including non-constitutional, they apply them discriminatively (e.g., United Russia has on many occasions organized rallies in violation of the law but nobody dared to “bean” them for that), and they control the courts, so that the protesters can’t defend their rights there. So what kind of “obedience” can Putin demand from the opposition? I’m not even asking if Putin heard about the term “civil disobedience” and that it is often used to effectively advance rule of law.

2. Even in Putin’s law, there is no such thing as a “permission” to hold protests. The Law on Gatherings, Meetings, Demonstrations, Marches and Pickets, according to which all rallies are to be held, you only need to file a notice to local authorities that you are going to hold an action. Strategy 31 (which Putin most probably is referring to) makes it every time, complying with the law absolutely. And still, every time they get “beaned” by Putin’s riot police. So who is violating the law?

3. The last, smaller but remarkable lie: Putin also “forgot” that his own law forbids to use batons and other “special means” to disperse peaceful rallies, and the new Law on Police will forbid to “bean” people, i.e. beat them on the head. The law rightfully calls it “cruel treatment” and it doesn’t take a degree in law (which Putin kind of has) to understand why it is so. But if you yourself are a cruel person, this kind of treatment is just right: “That’s it!”

Putin vs. Obama: What People Search

You can tell a lot about a political figure by just looking at what people want to know about her. One of the simplest ways to learn it is to use Google’s search prompt.

Let’s compare what people search for with Putin and with Obama as keywords:

Lines of the first pic translated top-down:
– “putin and kabaeva” (there are rumors of Putin having an affair with young athlete, United Russia’s State Duma deputy Alina Kabaeva)
– “putin” (plain and simple, yet less popular than the Kabaeva story)
– “putin eats children” (it was a humorous slogan coined by Oborona in 2006 after Putin’s famous kissing of a small boy’s belly)
– “putin crab” (this is a pun made of Putin’s well-known statement that he’d been working “as a slave at a galley,” which sounds in Russian close to “as a crab at a galley”)
– “putin bio” (finally, at least somebody still wants to know something about this guy)
– “dismiss putin” (a popular opposition slogan and a name of a Website where signatures for his resignment are gathered)
– “putin jew” (the guys who tend to believe that Putin is connected with ZOG apparently want to check it)
– “putin vladimir vladimirovich” (his full name, like if there are many different Putins around)
– “putin must go” (it’s quite clear, right?)
– “putin kabaeva” (they stilll want to know more about it)

The least we can say is, few users take Putin seriously. He is either a hero of tabloids, jokes and puns or someone people want to get rid of. Nobody wants to read his speeches, follow his blog (well, he has none anyway) or even learn about any of his proposals (most of them are too vague and populist to be taken seriously, too).

My Column on Extending President’s Term

Here is my latest column for RobertAmsterdam.com on Medvedev’s plan to change the Constitution.

First Amendment, Russian Edition

RobertAmsterdam.com

November 7, 2008

On 5th November the world’s attention was drawn to American presidential elections and the victory of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Russian authorities used this day to declare an unprecedented reform in the country’s recent history—changes to the Constitution. Dmitry Medvedev in an annual address to the houses of the Parliament suggested that the presidential term should be increased from 4 years to 6 years and the Duma’s term—to 5 years.

There is no doubt that Medvedev’s “suggestion” will be regarded as an order by members of Parliament. They have already responded to his speech and expressed readiness to vote for any Kremlin’s amendments to the Constitution. A referendum on this issue is not required, so adopting the new legislation will be easy and quick. Some deputies have even said that Medvedev’s current term may be prolonged till 2014 instead of 2012 (and Duma’s till 2012 instead of 2011). Later and rarer elections will somewhat ease the Kremlin’s fear of an “electoral revolution”—its worst nightmare since the uprising at Kyiv Maidan.

The changes, if passed, will become the first amendment to the Russian Constitution since it was adopted on a referendum15 years ago. Medvedev’s predecessor, Vladimir Putin, has always been repeating that the Constitution doesn’t need any changes. He preferred to simply ignore it: when he abolished elections of regional governors, submitted the Parliament to himself, technically introduced censorship and political repression, violated independence of courts and property rights. But some things still couldn’t be changed without amending the Constitution, like the length of president’s term or the two-term limit. As usual with KGB, Putin didn’t do the dirty part of the work himself, he used Medvedev instead.

Ironically, the first changes to the Constitution were suggested by the person elected to his office at the staged and fraudulent elections that lacked even minimal legitimacy. Then they are to be approved by the undemocratically elected Duma lacking any real opposition and then by the Council of Federation whose members haven’t been elected at all. To add to this picture of cynicism, this is done while praising the Constitution and its standards of democracy at a pompous celebration of its jubilee planned for 12th December.

The plans to change the Constiution were immediately condemned by the opposition and don’t seem to be popular among regular people. The emerging united democratic movement Solidarity called Medvedev’s actions illegitimate and antidemocratic. The Other Russia coalition plans to hold a Dissenters’ March in December that will demand that the Constitution remains untouched. People who discuss the issue on the Internet and in the street also criticize the changes. The government, however, prefers to ignore the public opinion.

As the opposition candidate in the USA receives congratulations on winning presidential elections, Russian ruling elite shows once again that it’s not going to pass power to anybody else. Comparison of Russia’s first amendment to the Constitution to the American First Amendment perfectly symbolizes that development of democracy here has gone terribly wrong.