Restoration and Fronde

Citizens found an answer to uncontested elections

The unified voting day on September 9 became significant for several reasons. First of all, the authorities, inspired by the course of the presidential campaign, for the first time decided to organize frankly uncontested gubernatorial elections throughout the country, including the capital. Observers rightly note that this is a return of the big Soviet style, when elections were a mandatory but insignificant ritual, and the reward for voters was not the opportunity to express their political interests, but a sandwich from a specially organized buffet.

Accordingly, in sparring partners of the current governors and acting. not the strongest contenders were specially selected, who in the electoral lists play the role of an electoral retinue. In proportion to the decrease in political competition, spending on decorating election precincts has increased. In Moscow, the elections were combined with the City Day and residents were not hesitant to invite the whole family to the celebration, which was conveniently located next to the PEC. All this looks like an application for a serious, long-term restoration of the “bloc of communists and non-party people”, which is doomed to strategic victories until the entire political system becomes unusable.

Secondly, everything that is happening seems to suit a significant part of Russian society. As in previous years, citizens do not really believe that something can be changed in elections, they consider politics a dirty business and do not see causal relationships between political participation and the quality of their own lives. Now added to this apathy is an updated public contract:

citizens, in principle, do not interfere in the affairs of their superiors, and go to elections only to report on their place of work in government agencies or for souvenirs.

This contract does not suit everyone (more on that below), but it is beginning to be perceived as a normal state of affairs. At least those citizens who were planned as a target group in the campaign under the slogan "to the elections as a holiday."

An important example for our journalistic work: Tatyana Yurasova and numerous volunteers prove time after time that the presidential elections in March were rigged, since the numbers on the ballots in various regions differ from the number of voters at the polling stations - sometimes this difference is 40% turnout. The head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, at first offers to sort it out, but then her enthusiasm weakens. People's attention to the topics of electoral investigations is also decreasing. Society has evidence of a fake democracy in its hands, but it only shrugs its shoulders: we always knew that it would be so.

Despite this, the September 9 elections nevertheless split the society - there were many who did not accept the new contract ("democracy in exchange for balloons in the polling stations"). The catalyst for interest in the elections on the part of disgruntled citizens, of course, was the “pension reform”. In this sense, the results of the campaign, it seems, turned out to be completely different from what was planned by theorists in the presidential administration - and no one will be patted on the head for this. The capitals responded to election day with protests that, by all accounts, spoiled the holiday somewhat. Of course, the propaganda failed to notice these protests on duty: a thousand detained citizens had no effect on official reports on Russian television. But even very apolitical citizens, who found themselves on a walk in the center of Moscow on September 9, had a chance to notice that the city hosts not only a flower festival.

More importantly, the regions supported the protests in their own way, failing as many as four candidates from seemingly uncontested United Russia candidates in the gubernatorial elections. The "pension reform" gave an instant and dramatic effect - the country will have an unprecedented number of second rounds in the last 6 years, in which even frank extras from the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party have a chance to win. The logic of such a vote is already classical: anyone, but not these. The titanic efforts of the authorities to increase the turnout (which is only worth the Moscow extension of the work of polling stations by two hours and the official opportunity to vote outside the city, closer to summer cottages) did not lead to noticeable results. And this means that those who were asked to be sure to vote for the authorities came to the apathetic elections, and those who were fed up with everything. No "pro-government majority" is provided for in this construction.

So the main result of the elections is as follows. By preventing citizens from having their own political representatives, the authorities provoked "anyone" voting and street actions right in front of the polling stations. Moreover, a dangerous union of capitals and regions has been outlined through the “pension reform”: citizens who organized a second round in their provinces or simply went out on election day to protest actions are Navalny’s potential electorate.