Im alive again!

I´ve had a serious break from blogging as you might have noticed. I guess I´ve had other things on my mind. I´m gonna try and post more frequently from now on though!

Alot of exciting stuff is going on at the moment. We have the election in Russia and obviously the credit squeeze in the US, which is spreading and is feared to spread even further, creating unrest on markets. The parlamentary elections in Russia, which may not be that exciting in terms of the outcome, are still a big deal. United Russia (which is the ruling party today) is heading for a landslide win obviously. Whats more interesting is that the only party that is basicly getting the opportunity to meet United Russia representatives in debates is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. You guys can read more about the different parties participating here.

So in other words, the main opposition to United Russia is a communistic party that has survived the fall of the Sovjet union, getting the second best score last time elections were held. This puts Russia behind former Sovjet states such as Poland and the baltic countries, which don´t even have serious communistic alternatives in their elections these days. Russias political situation is kinda unique. The main point however is probably the fact that russia and russians dont really understand what democracy is all about, they have never experienced it, so how could they? What we have in Russia today is simply an illusion of democracy where one party has a majority in the parlament (Duma) and is calling all the shots, even eliminating poitical opposition in highly suspicious ways. And Vladimir Putin has by not very marketfriendly means taken control of the economy, getting growth on track and thereby fortyfing his position as the undisputed leader of a country that basicly is as far from democracy as it was during the Sovjet era.

Obviously the parties that have a chance of reaching the 7 percent that are required to enter the Duma are all bad alternatives to united russia. And this is, obviously, what Putin & Co want. They dont want a political arena with no theoretical opposition, because that wouldn´t let them call the whole deal a democracy, right? Financial Times, issue of today, has an article describing all parties who are predicted to reach the 7 percent limit in the elections as “artificial” creations made by Putin and United Russia. The serious contenders who actually stand behind a policy that might and probably would improve Russia, taking it one or even many steps towards real deomcracy are not even in the game. They are being discriminated and not given a proper chance to compete. Demonstrations against the ruling side, just the other day, resulted in 200 people being put in jail for five days. Among them where important russian opposition leaders. Like in what western country would this stuff happen???

Anyway United Russia will stick around ofr quite some time I´m afraid. Especially since growthrates are looking good (obviously mostly thanks to great Russian assets in raw materials etc but anyway...) during the last couple of years and the standard of life is getting improved. However other, more honest parties, had to take the blame for the 90´s reform crisis even if we all know every former Sovjetstate had major problems in the 90´s....

Here you can find a interesting Q&A in the matter.


/Rob