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There was little surprise in the results of Russia's parliamentary election Sunday, with Vladimir Putin's party appearing to have won two-thirds of the vote. Given the extensive use of state resources to tilt the political playing field entirely in the favor of the ruling party, the outcome was all but predetermined. But the more telling fact may be that Putin's managed election victory has caused so little public discontent outside of small liberal enclaves of the middle class and die-hard supporters of the Communist Party. That lack of an outcry is just further proof that...
...There was nothing subtle about official attempts to shape the election result. Opposition parties and leaders were harassed, the electronic media relentlessly flattered Putin's achievements, and state employees were pressured to turn out and vote for his United Russia party. In Chechnya, the breakaway province bombed and bludgeoned into quiescence by Putin since taking office in 2000, some 99.4% of the vote went to his party...
...never lost an election. Scrambling to explain this aberration in a land where Hugo Chavez dominates the political landscape, many political observers point to the thousands of university students, who, dormant until this year, clogged the streets to protest the reform in the weeks leading up to the vote. Raul Baduel, the former defense minister and longtime ally of the President, also injected life into the opposition when he, along with the former pro-Chavez party Podemos (Spanish for "We Can"), called for people to vote no. But the results raise another, perhaps more important, question: how much help...
...used to be a given that Chavez could count on the lower class, which represents the majority of the population, to turn the vote his way. Clearly, after logging 49% of the vote for his controversial reform, Chavez still has many of the poor on his side. The electoral council has yet to release detailed results that would indicate how impoverished areas voted. But an abstention rate of 44% suggests some of Chavez's traditional support base didn't show up to vote. And, narrow as the vote count was, the rejection of his proposal only one year after...
...rejoice clogged streets, set off fireworks and exchanged embraces. As the mostly student crowd chanted and played drums outside the opposition campaign headquarters, newspaper editor and former presidential candidate Teodoro Petkoff flashed a wide smile. "Last week it was evident there was a transfer of people who usually vote for Chavez, and they defeated it," he said...