To nobody’s surprise, Putin’s United Russia party won about 64% of the vote in last Sunday’s election. Check out the party share vs. voter turnout graph (from /.). At least Kasparov is out of jail, though his party was not allowed to run for parliament.
The question is where the democratic hegemony lies in the world today. Bush has clearly destroyed any int’l credibility the US ever had. The UK and Australia are seen as Bush’s puppets. So Putin is successfully able to position any hint of democracy as a secret power grab by the west. Which is a long way to say that Putin’s “reelection” and any election fraud in Russia is all Bush’s fault, because if the US had appropriately handled our responsibility for world leadership over the past eight years, Putin never could have sold that line and the opposition would have more support.
I think Australia’s rep will really change over the next few years. Rudd pretty much gave Bush the finger by signing Kyoto right away and I think that is a sign of his general leanings and that we’d see more of that in the future. The question is, what influence will leadership from Australia, a second-tier country in the whole “World power” paradigm, have (also why is their conservative party called the liberals? so confusing!)? And I frankly haven’t heard enough about Brown to know, but wouldn’t it be hard to be more of Bush’s lapdog than Blair was?
The Russian elections were a farce, but I do think there is reason to hope that there will be more and stronger leadership in this world than the U.S.’s, which I think would be a good thing (no matter who is president).