NYT
Editorial
October 26, 2007

Editorial

Putin Takes on the Election Observers

It was only with luck, Benjamin Franklin mulled during the debates of
the Constitutional Convention, that the framers would "produce a
government that could forestall, for a decade perhaps, the decline of
the Republic into tyranny." The American states had that luck. Russia
has not.

The latest sign of its sad decline is a diplomatic campaign by the
Kremlin, reported by C. J. Chivers in The Times this week, to curtail
the activities of election observers from the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe – just in time for Russia’s
December parliamentary elections and March presidential election.

President Vladimir Putin is not trying to bar the observers
altogether; that would be too obvious. What he wants is to cut the
size of the monitoring missions and stop them from immediately
releasing their reports, thus diminishing their impact.

We can see how foreign observers can grate on a country’s pride. But
what the Kremlin and its allies clearly do not want is anyone paying
too much attention to their antidemocratic ploys. Mr. Putin is
convinced that the European group’s criticism of elections in Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan helped foment the so-called "color" revolutions
that set the votes right. Russia pre-emptively sent its own
"observers" to elections in Belarus to contradict the organization’s
misgivings.

Mr. Putin’s K.G.B.-heavy government calls the monitoring "meddling in
internal affairs." We call it blowing the whistle, which is exactly
what the group is supposed to do.

Even a critical report from the observers would probably not alter the
outcome of Russia’s elections, since the problem there is not so much
voting procedures as the Kremlin’s near-absolute control over who can
run and who gets access to national television. In Russia’s last
presidential election, in 2004, an observer mission reported that "the
process over all did not adequately reflect principles necessary for a
healthy democratic election." It is far worse today.

It is telling that Mr. Putin’s current effort to change the procedures
is co-signed by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan, all states with compelling reasons to limit the
influence of independent observers.

Source: tml