Complicity in elections

Nikolay Polozov’s blog.

The coming election to the State Duma of the seventh convention of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation is unique for the newest Russian history. The elections in Russia are held for the first time after external aggression act intervened in 2014 – the military invasion to the part of Ukraine in the Russian Federation’s favor.

The world community in its overwhelming majority hasn’t acknowledged these Russian authorities’ actions as legal and solemn under the international law. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution A/RES/68/262 at March 27, 2014 condemning the actions of the Russian authorities, not recognizing the Crimean referendum at March 18, 2014 and confirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in its internationally recognized borders. These actions resulted in applying the international sanctions against the Russian Federation and the annexed territory that are nowadays after two years significantly affected the economic situation of the Russian citizens and residents in Crimea.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted a number of times in his interviews the armed forces of the Russian Federation took a direct part in annexation of Crimea. In fact the referendum in Crimea (by the way, isn’t forseen neither by the Constitution of the Autonomous Crimean Republic nor by the Constitution of Ukraine) was held at gunpoint of the Russians military officers, and its results (yeah, we all do remember those Churov’s 146 per cents) can’t be trusted.

The Russian authority committed a crime under international law. The responsibility for all those actions lies personally on the shoulders of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and a number of the Russian high-ranking officials and some citizens of Ukraine – collaborators in Crimea. 

However, the government wants to share its responsibility to all voters and constituents out of the Russian citizens through the elections that will take place including in Crimea. Let’s confess a neat trick.

The elections will be held under current Russian law under a mixed electoral system: half of the 450 deputies will be elected through the party lists of the Federal District, the other half will be elected as the single-mandate constituencies.

The peculiarity of the party lists in the Federal District is that the parties can’t choose a region spontaneously wishing to be elected and not. Within the political rally some parties announced that they won’t carry out election campaigns in Crimea, meanwhile in a single voting day at September 18 they will be included into the ballots in each electoral district including Crimea. And, of course, potentially each party in any case will be received a number of votes from Crimea that will be considered in the total number of votes received by each party in the Federal District.

As one scabbed sheep will mar a whole flack, the flack won’t be a flack anymore. Thus the legitimacy of votes obtained by party lists will be discredited by votes received from the annexed territory which is recognized by the international community as a part of Ukraine. Concerning the single-mandate constituency in Crimea the total number of «illegitimate» deputies in the State Duma will exceed 51%, and there will be more scabbed sheep in our conventional flack.

The only way out of such unpleasant situation for the «opposition» party will withdraw from the pre-election party list race. Will the «opposition» parties take a principal leap? I doubt it. There is at stake a decent sum of money from the state party financing, and billions of rubles.

Speaking about the «ruling parties» and party–»spoilers» does not make sense within such contexts, and it is all clear.

Concerning the candidates in single-mandate constituency, my opinion is that two or three decent persons in the country who can be tolerated by the elections to the Parliament should not «elevate» the illegitimate authority due to own presence and give a false hope to the voters on its legitimization and integrity. Also, in addition to responsibility for the annexation of Crimea delegated by the government to all voters, these people take on additional responsibility for the decisions to be taken by the new members of the State Duma.

There is no certainty that the international community recognizes the current elections to the State Duma as legal that the international bodies, parliamentary assemblies, such as PACE and the OSCE PA will provide an opportunity to delegate to the State Duma own representatives to follow the political work in it.

Certainly, the Russian authorities thoughtless and adventurous foreign policy as well as a desire to remove the responsibility from the shoulders of the President Putin for an annexation of Crimea and to pass it through elections onto the citizens of Russia will only contribute to the further country isolation, the deterioration of the economic situation of citizens and further infringement of their rights and freedoms.

One of the most affected by the actions of the Russian government groups whose rights and freedoms are systematically violated is the indigenous people of Crimea - the Crimean Tatars, they have already made their moral choice in 2014 when argued against the illegal actions of the Russian authorities and the Crimean collaborators. And now, the overwhelming majority of the Crimean Tatars are not going to participate in the illegal elections in Crimea, they have boycotted of the elections.

Now the time has come when every man for itself to decide whether he is ready to become an accomplice of the Crimean annexation and to share this responsibility with President Putin and the Russian government or consciously rejects «generous» offer. It is time when one has to make a moral choice between maintaining the illusion of democracy in an authoritarian system and «non-participation in lies» when there is no place for transactions with a conscience.

I’ve made my choice.

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