On the wave of continuous accusations launched by opposition parties and civil society organizations that the Parliamentary elections in Moldova (April 2009) were rigged, and that ODIHR/OSCE Observation Mission failed to do its job, I would like to get back to an article of mine, published by Transitions Online on 4 December 2008. That piece emphasized few ideas that months latter proved to be somewhat prophetic. Among them was the idea that OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights elections observation methodology became an archaic relic of the post-Cold War period, when the West was eager to teach the hungry-for-democracy post-Soviet countries how to run the electoral process.
However, since the mid 90s that methodology did not change, while the “naive” politicians in post-Soviet countries started to use state-of-the-art PR and social engineering techniques, which allowed them to fool the West, ODIHR, and use election process for legitimizing the continuous stay in power of their regimes. Obviously, with each additional electoral cycle that way of running elections lead to the annihilation, little by little, even of the primitive checks and balances that started to take shape in the political systems of some former USSR republics. But I won’t say a word more – here comes that article.
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Elections: False Hope
by Dumitru Minzarari
4 December 2008
Voting is losing its utility and value in ex-Soviet countries as rigging elections becomes routine practice for incumbent governments.
Elections have long been the flagship of the West’s democratization efforts worldwide. The West continues to see elections as a litmus test for measuring the advance of democracy in a country. This view has held even when significant resources invested into the liberalization of ex-Soviet Read the rest of this entry »
