Re-run election, says Gorbachev; support Russia’s democrats, says bipartisan group

Democracy Digest

The United States must speak and act in support of Russia’s pro-democracy forces, a bipartisan group insisted today.

Passing the Sergei Magnitsky Act “would send a clear message to Russian Prime Minister Putin and his United Russia party that those guilty of human rights abuses will not be able to travel to the United States or protect their corrupt gains in our financial institutions,” said a statement from the Russia Working Group.

“The Magnitsky case is one of the most emblematic examples of the breakdown of law in Russia,” says William F. Browder. “Unlike many other murder cases, where there is some plausible deniability about who pulled the trigger, here we have in such granular detail who was responsible and a chain of command that goes right up to the cabinet. Because of that, this is like a cancer that they don’t seem to be able to get rid of. And the more they try to cover up, the more this becomes the Watergate of Russia.”

Congress should confirm democracy advocate Michael McFaul as ambassador to Russia, the working group continues, and support a Helsinki 2.0 process for transatlantic cooperation and dialogue in support of democratic reform in Russia:

On December 4, despite blatant and desperate efforts by the Russian leadership and the party of power, United Russia, to skew results in their favor, Russian voters sent a strong message of discontent to long-serving leader Vladimir Putin. The rampant harassment of opposition and civil society groups, cyber attacks on liberal platforms like Live Journal and the independent election monitoring organization GOLOS, and pervasive fraud and ballot stuffing were not able to hide the fact that many Russians have grown tired with the corrupt status quo and all that United Russia represents. While United Russia received 64 percent of the vote in the 2007 Duma elections, they were in 2011 unable to win even 50 percent of the vote.

The statement* came as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for last week’s State Duma elections to be invalidated and re-run.

“With every passing day, more and more Russians are ceasing to believe that the results of the elections were honest,” Gorbachev said. “In my view, ignoring public opinion will discredit the authorities and destabilize the situation. That is why I think the government should make but one decision: annul the results of the elections and hold new ones.”

The Russian authorities’ heavy-handed approach to post-election protests has drawn international criticism.

“All countries have the duty to respect the dissenting opinion of its own citizens,” said Matteo Mecacci (right), head of the the human rights committee at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Restricting these basic civil and political rights is not the way for any democracy to function and is a dangerous path for the authorities to follow.”

Russia’s opposition remains “split between the so-called ‘systemic’ parties, represented in parliament, and the ‘non-systemic’ groupings that are driving the street protests,” writes Konstantin von Eggert, a host for the commercial radio station Kommersant.

Though many Russian citizens are increasingly restive, they want reform, not revolution. That’s a good sign for the Kremlin, but other factors “are eroding the regime’s ability to respond to the situation coherently. ”

“People are tired of the same faces,” Igor Yurgens, a liberal adviser to President Dmitry Medvedev, was quoted by a prominent blogger as saying. “I fear that if the presidential election campaign goes in the same way, we will have a very serious situation.”

That suggests one long-term indicator should be especially worrying, says von Eggert:

It is losing credence not only with intellectuals and bohemians, but with a swathe of thirty-somethings, who have moved from political indifference or even support for Mr Putin to principled opposition. These people are not numerous, but they are educated, travelled, internet-savvy and forward-looking. They are irretrievably lost to the Kremlin and “United Russia” – and with them the majority in the nation’s two capitals. This is very significant. Both the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and the great anti-Communist revolution of 1989-1991 was decided in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

“When Russian officials behave in blatantly undemocratic ways……… they should not get a pass from the White House because of fear that criticism of their actions might upset the reset,” said David Kramer, head of Freedom House, the democracy watchdog.

“Support for principles and not individuals will rarely do us harm,” he writes, giving credit to Hillary Clinton for taking such a position.

The bipartisan statement in full:

On December 4, despite blatant and desperate efforts by the Russian leadership and the party of power, United Russia, to skew results in their favor, Russian voters sent a strong message of discontent to long-serving leader Vladimir Putin. The rampant harassment of opposition and civil society groups, cyber attacks on liberal platforms like Live Journal and the independent election monitoring organization GOLOS, and pervasive fraud and ballot stuffing were not able to hide the fact that many Russians have grown tired with the corrupt status quo and all that United Russia represents. While United Russia received 64 percent of the vote in the 2007 Duma elections, they were in 2011 unable to win even 50 percent of the vote.

The OSCE’s preliminary analysis of Sunday’s election unfortunately confirmed the concerns of a broad swath of Russian civil society actors that the election would be characterized by a “slanted” playing field. The election itself was marred by, “the convergence of State and the governing party,” and countless “instances of apparent manipulation … and ballot box stuffing” on vote day. Nevertheless, the growing fatigue that many Russians have for the political status quo and the ruling party could not be tamped down entirely by these repressive measures.

In a Moscow rally held the day after the election, Russian voters demonstrated that they were willing to stand up against Kremlin efforts to take away their right to participate in Russia’s democratic rule. The fact that more than 5,000 people took to the streets to protest against both Prime Minister Putin and the falsification of the elections is a rare public display of Russian voters’ discontent with both the reality and perceived trajectory of their country’s leadership.

The United States and the free peoples of the world must continue to stand with those courageous Russians. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered the right message in saying, “we do have serious concerns about the conduct of the elections” and that “Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted. And that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.” The Obama administration must continue with strong statements against the fraud and deceit orchestrated by United Russia.

More than words, however, are needed. The passage of the bi-partisan Sergei Magnitsky Act, a bill that proposes to ban Russian human rights violators from entering the United States, would send a clear message to Russian Prime Minister Putin and his United Russia party that those guilty of human rights abuses will not be able to travel to the United States or protect their corrupt gains in our financial institutions. To reinforce that message, we further call on Congress to confirm Michael McFaul, a true advocate for democracy, as ambassador to Russia. Renewed engagement for democracy and rule of law in Russia requires transatlantic actions and as such, we recognize the important contributions of Guy Verhofstadt, President for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in launching a Helsinki 2.0 Conference in November to restart this dialogue and launch an action agenda for Americans and Europeans.

Leon Aron
Eric Edelman
Jamie Fly
Robert Kagan
David Kramer
Stephen Sestanovich*
Randy Scheunemann
Stephen Rademaker

*Stephen Sestanovich is a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group. GOLOS is a NED grantee. займы на карту без отказа hairy woman https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php unshaven girls