President Putin may have secured a docile parliament to rubber stamp the Kremlin’s future policies and programme (if one is ever made public!) and he has certainly strengthened his power, cutting down, in the election process, the key oligarchical obstacle to his rule.

However, the President’s authority and image have been badly damaged by a campaign that was widely viewed as biased and a result that was manipulated to order.
Western capital and politicians had tended to give Vladimir Vladimirovich the benefit of the doubt on the human rights front and turned blind eyes to his crackdown on the free media and dissenting voices, dazzled no doubt by the mirages of future profits and big deals.
Now the wolf is out of the lamb’s clothing and can effectively pass any laws he likes, including changing the Constitution.

While all this may be fine and dandy for the secret policeman inside, the Putin veneer is starting to look tainted by such Third World electoral behaviour.
Undoubtedly, the President’s tough line against Chechen terrorism and his drive to bring more order to society struck a chord with a majority, but a coterie of Yes-men and those with an eye on the big prize assets have hijacked this line (with or without Putin’s blessing) and are steering a course for authoritarian rule where a redistribution of national wealth can take place in the inner sanctum with no prying eyes of a free press.
So zealous were these Yes-men – the PR machine put in place by the Kremlin – that they forgot to allow the liberal-conservatives of Yabloko and the SPS a symbolic representation in parliament. Such a representation would have given a fig leaf of legitimacy to the December poll at least. A bad miscalculation.

A parliament with Zhirinovsky in full roar and the puppet Glaziev marshalling ten percent of the Deputies has an ugly intolerant tinge and the United Russia lobby fodder may well have to be split up into factions to give a semblance of Opposition (particularly as the Communists have been well and truly muscled out of the picture).
Russia’s rulers may have temporarily pulled the wool over the international community’s eyes, but the ultimate joke – as usual – may be on the home electorate.

Moscow News’ Larissa Latynina went as far as to say that the voters who wanted a real liberal/conservative alternative were in fact disenfranchised. Messrs Nemtsov and Chubais, did not help matters, being photographed on their campaign private jet behind their laptops. No better image for those that are convinced they are an out of touch elite.

Maybe new democratic leaders will now emerge to take the place of those that discredited themselves. They need to do it quickly if spring 2004 is not to be a Secret Policeman’s Ball!

Paul Colston