Many Russians now believe that last week’s elections were rigged and former leader Mikhail Gorbachev said they should be annulled and held again. It comes as no surprise because Putin and Gorbachev hate each other, Putin blames Gorbachev for the Soviet Union's demise.
Ex KGB agent Putin was taken by surprise when his party, United Russia lost popularity - he thought the Russian people adored him. But to give credit where it’s due, he was responsible for the return of order, and brought stability and progress to Russia which earned him widespread support but the election result shows that his popularity is now on the decline. And enough is enough, he fixed it so he could be in power until 2024. Because his party had such a huge majority, they pushed a constitutional amendment through parliament to extend the presidential term from four to six years.
So what went wrong? Blogger Alexei Navalny is one of Putin’s biggest headaches but there are plenty more like him. He devised a protest vote – vote for any party except United Russia and it worked and had a devastating effect. When the Kremlin found out what had happened, they had to make up the lost votes quickly. United Russia’s real vote in Moscow was 23.5% but officially it stands at 46.5% which means that one million votes were stolen in one city alone.
Putin panicked and shut down websites but realized it was a mistake, it's impossible to fight the social media, especially when You Tube was showing video clips of election officials stuffing ballot boxes.
There is a huge demonstration planned near the Kremlin this Saturday and it will be interesting to see how Putin handles it. He could do nothing and pretend it isn’t happening, come down hard on the protestors while the world looks on, or announce another election. No matter which way he goes, he's in trouble.
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