4 Mar 2012 | Russia
Election day is here. And, according to all the signals, it will be as interesting as anticipated.
The first exit polls coming from the far Eastern regions of Russia are quite shocking: preferences for Putin’s United Russia are below 50 per cent, reaching as low as 42 per cent according to certain pollsters. If this is confirmed, a second round will be needed for Putin’s victory. On the other hand, Twitter and Facebook feeds are exploding with videos and pictures documenting “Carousels”, buses with voters sent to cast their votes for United Russia, often more than once.
After a few very calm days, perhaps the calm before the storm, there were several worrying episodes of opposition activists attacked and arrested in Moscow in the late hours of yesterday. Several members linked to the all-girl punk band Pussy Riot, who perform anti-Putin songs dressed in bright mini-skirts and coloured balaclavas, were arrested on charges of hooliganism following an impromptu performance at a cathedral on 21 February. At Kropotkinskaya metro station, two Solidarnost activists and one Novaya Gazeta photo reporter were held. A member of the Committee for Fair Elections, Aleksandr Bilov, was attacked in his home’s entrance and arrested after he fought back the attack.
Early this morning, an army of nearly 30,000 election observers marched towards the polling stations assigned to them, gathering there by 7:30am. Most were well equipped with smart phones, video cameras and guides to correct electoral procedures. As announced in December, Putin installed £320m worth of web cameras around polling stations to contribute to the fairness of the elections, but this did not reassure his opponents much. If proof was needed to confirm that a wave of civil activism has hit Moscow, then this army of election watchers is the final one. Tweeting by observers has already gone viral with the Twitter hash-tag #выборы2012.
Putin is expected to win, eventually, but the question is by how much. His ratings are still extremely high in the countryside, where “any desire of living better is outweighed by a persistent fear of living worse”, the NYT reports. Besides that, none of the other candidates pose an actual threat to him. The only real new entry is the liberal businessman Prokhorov, whose campaign was too short to be able to gain a significant amount of followers. Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky are two “professional opposition candidates” at the opposite ends of the political spectrum, who are today little more than caricatures of themselves, while Mironov… who is Mironov? An anonymous long-time Putin backer, hardly taken seriously by anyone. Yavlinsky, Yabloko leader and most serious counter-candidate, was not allowed to run in the elections because of alleged irregularities in the collection of signatures.
The main person to watch in the opposition spectrum remains Aleksey Navalny. The anti-corruption blogger and lawyer has rapidly risen to political stardom over the past few months. He is a controversial figure — concerns are often raised about his nationalistic views and his “prima donna” attitude. He is very popular among the younger generations for his open way of interacting on the web. It will be interesting to observe his public appearances in the next few days: much of his political future may depend from it.
Among the opposition forces nobody dares say it out loud, but many think that Putin’s defeat would not be a good thing right now. The opposition is too young and fragile to be effective. Until only some months ago, there was nobody to listen to it. Suddenly, Moscow is buzzing with political talk and desire for change, but until a couple of years (if not months) ago, the only people you could find speaking about Russian politics were foreigners. A potential new Russian leader needs a basis of consensus which is still in development, and an all-encompassing programme that it is still lacking.
Demonstrations have already been announced for tomorrow, 5 March. Opposition will gather at 7pm in Pushkin square, while the nationalist group Nashi will be in Manezh square at 4pm. The opposition wants to take the protest to the Red Square but authorities have not allowed this action, though it may still go ahead. Rumours say that the action at the Garden Ring last week was been the last peaceful demonstration, but it could be counterproductive for Putin to crack hard on the protesters.
The carrot-and-stick Medvedev-and-Putin political model gone, it is now time for Vladimir Putin to reveal which one of the two methods is he going to choose in his next term as president of the Russian Federation — which might begin later than expected.
2 Mar 2012 | Africa, Index Index, minipost
A number of attacks and threats have been made against journalists covering the Sengalese presidential elections. At least 12 incidents of threats and physical harm have been recorded against journalists in the lead up to and aftermath of the vote. Senegal’s incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade stood against thirteen other candidates in elections for a third term in power on Sunday. No official results have been released.
27 Feb 2012 | Russia
More than 30,000 people encircled Moscow in a human chain along Sadovoe Kolco, a 10-mile long road surrounding the city yesterday.
Protesters were calling for fair elections and for the ousting of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Arguably, the biggest surprise of the protest was its participants. What was once referred to as a “hipster-revolution” has become a broader movement. Yesterday’s human chain united people across social class, age, gender and even political creed. There were hard-core leftists but also liberals and disillusioned former Putinistas. There were mothers and fathers with their children (and dogs, too). There were, of course, youngsters – but also many, many elderly people as well.
Kaya Ivanovna, a 80-year-old former librarian found out about the protests from the radio. “There are many more prohibitions, and all the interesting TV programmes that made us reflect and discuss were shut down. I want real change”.
The unusual protest started at 2pm and continued for a couple of hours under the abundant snow covering the capital. Moscow, a usually grey and unwelcoming city, yesterday displayed a ten-mile-long smile.
The only note of unrest in an otherwise peaceful demonstration was the impromptu action organised by the opposition party Left Front in Revolution Square. The unauthorised protest triggered scuffles with the police and the ultra-nationalist group Nashi.
Index was there and filmed the Left Front’s leader Sergei Udaltsov’s statement before the clashes and arrests started. “We are here to celebrate our own Maslennitsa [the Russian spring feast celebrated yesterday]”, he said. “We want to get rid of the political winter, and we want a new political spring to come to Russia starting from today”.
Meanwhile, thousands of Russians are preparing to serve as election observers for the elections to be held on 4 March. Referring to the huge number of registrations the daily newspaper Vedomosti referenced “A country of observers”.
The next protest action is planned for election day 4 March but many believe that 5 March will be the day when the movement “for fair elections” will see its biggest demonstration yet.
Tena Prelec is a freelance writer and consultant at the ESOP Centre, London.
17 Feb 2012 | Americas, Mexico
Mexican politicians are using social networks in sleight of hand similar to the ones they used in elections before the age of technology, say critics. Instead of paying voters to show up for the vote, or stuffing boxes — known practices in previous mid-term or presidential elections — today’s savvy campaign managers are helping their candidates swell up their numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook “likes”.
“They are doing online what they used to do offline,” according to Maria Elena Meneses, a media expert and professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey who has studied elections and the Internet.
The campaign of ruling party presidential candidate Josefina Vasquez Mota drew much criticism after it allegedly used an internet bot to create a trending topic during recent elections to select the presidential candidate for the ruling Partido de Accion Nacional. News magazine Procesoreported that news sites that had measured the growth of the Vasquez Mota’s followers could determine how many of them were obtained through the bots.
Despite this criticism, Vasquez Mota seems to have one of the best online media teams. Her approach is similar to that used by US President Barak Obama in his 2008 presidential elections. The team’s use of various hashtags to trigger a trending topic, including the hashtag #HoyganaJosefina, which means “today Josefina wins”, helped expand her followers list by 31,000 in only a few hours in late January during her party’s internal election process (detractors say this is where the campaign used bots). The candidate’s Facebook page also has a lot of young followers.
Meneses says it is estimated that 15 million Internet users in Mexico are between the ages of 18 and 34. The young vote will be the more difficult to harness in the next presidential elections in July: 34 million new voters who turned 18 between 2006 and this year will be voting this presidential election.
But the presidential campaigns have a wooden Internet presence. Enrique Peña Nieto, the presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose party ruled Mexico for 70 years until 2000, uses YouTube, but, Meneses says, not in a way that would attract young voters. “They only tape their campaign presentations. There is no give and take with the audience, which is what young voters want,” she says.
Meneses says none of the three presidential candidates for the three major parties — the PAN, the PRI and the left of center Partido Revolucionario Democratico, (PRD) — are using social media effectively to reach and communicate with common citizens. “They could use those sites to respond to uncomfortable questions,” she insists.
