Brussels
Dr. de Donnea’s observation team visited twenty polling stations and two centralization offices in the Rostov area on polling day. According to his team’s conclusions, the proceedings of the elections themselves were not falsified. There was no harassment of voters nor any cheating with absentee certificates. The polling stations as well as the centralization offices were very well organized. At all stations, domestic observers from the opposition parties were present. Altogether, Dr. de Donnea assesses the election to the Duma as free and fair and believes that Russia is moving into the right direction. However, Dr. de Donnea emphasized that his findings were the result of a short-term observation. He reminded the audience that “freedom and fairness of elections did not depend solely on the way elections are conducted on the polling day itself, but also on the conditions in the run-up of the elections as such”. Dr. de Donnea regretted the absence of a delegation of the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) which could have carried out a long-term observation and thus could have complemented the OSCE mission.
Dr. Bomsdorf provided the audience with long-term observations. He painted a gloomier picture of the developments towards democracy and expressed doubts about the assertion of the Kremlin that the parliamentary elections were free and fair. In his opinion, the world witnessed an imitation of democratic elections due to the newly adopted election law which made political competition nearly impossible. Today it was practically not allowed to contest an election with a new party and the existing opposition parties had little access to the media, while President Putin was omnipresent on television. According to Dr. Bomsdorf, the elections were promoted by the governing parties - above all “United Russia” - as a referendum on the so called “Putin’s Plan”, the details of which remained unclear.
Dr. Bomsdorf emphasized that there is a fundamental problem with democracy in Russia, where “the character of the regime shapes everything of political importance, especially elections”. These were only a means to secure the power of the ruling establishment and the Duma only implemented the Kremlin’s orders. Thus at present, Russia has said farewell to democracy, he concluded. Regarding the future of the relations between the EU and Russia, Dr. Bomsdorf expressed his worries. Although he does not expect a new confrontation in Cold-War style, the relations will be difficult and shaped by the differing perceptions on both sides: “The Russia of today is a challenge”, said Dr. Bomsdorf, while promoting at the same time interest-based cooperation “wherever and whenever it is possible”.
As a last comment, Dr. de Donnea stressed that one should not be too pessimistic about the democratic evolution of Russia and recommended not to impose our highest democratic values on other countries, since this would never lead to a success. These countries would have to invent their own types of democracy. Finally, Dr. Bomsdorf expressed his belief that it would be for the good of Russia to develop democratic conditions and to invest in its human capital instead of only trusting its abundance of raw materials.
Susanne Hartig
Director Programmes
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