These days Vladimir Putin accepts congratulations from his colleagues. Old supporters of the Russian Premier sent warmest congratulations to Moscow, while Western leaders were less emotional. The West has certain claims to the process of the Russian elections, but they understand that they have to deal with Putin. In general international observers noted transparency of the elections.
The international observer from Germany Alexander Humberte, who followed the elections in the Ufa region and Bashkiria, said” “I think the elections were correct. There were no problems with the voting process or web-cameras. We could choose ballot stations by ourselves. We talked to other observers. They told me they didn’t notice any problems with organization of elections. But I can speak only about elections in Ufa, not in Russia in general.”
The international observer from Poland, Maryan Shelukha, was invited to Russia by non-governmental organizations. “We have visited 7 ballot stations in the Tula region – in Tula, in Venev and in the village Gorjevo. Local observers told us about one violation: at one of ballot stations members of the election commission didn’t let observers do their work. Moreover, in 6 out of 7 ballot stations there were no wheelchair ramps for disabled people. But it is not a serious problem, as members of election commissions and observers came to voters, who would like to vote at home.”
“I used to monitor elections in Russia before and I’ve always thought that it was ok,” Iorn Hellibry, international observer from Finland said. “But today, when I participated in the process as an observer, I had to look closer into the process and I had to change my mind: it’s not just ok, it’s perfect! The democratic processes that take place in Russia are being perceived with a great deal of scepticism by some of the citizens but most of all by foreign media. And Russia has to do 10 times better than, say, the US. So that is why those unprecedented measures were taken. If we’ll consider the electoral registers: in Russia they are provided by the state, like in the majority of civilized countries. But in the US a voter has to care for himself to be registered. They have to file special applications and in these applications they have to disclose their political sympathies: do they support democrats or republicans? There are no such non-democratic procedures in Russia. A paper was published in the US last February, and according to this research 24 million American voters filed their applications incorrectly, so they won’t be able to participate in the polls even though they want to. On the other hand, there are 2.5 million people on the electoral register who have already died but still are listed as voters. 3 million voters are registered in several states simultaneously. In its turn, during the Russian parliamentary elections only 700,000 voters were misregistered – a small number compared to 24 million. I would like to finish my observations by saying that there were no real problems with the vote in Russia, apart from a number of technical difficulties. But we are in a state of information war now, and the western media always tries to think of something to make a fuss about.”
