YOU THINK U.S. POLITICS ARE HIGHLY POLARIZED? IN THAILAND THEY ARE TAKING TO THE STREETS AND TALKING OF A COUP

DEMOCRACY 

IN THAILAND 

THAI PRIME MINISTER 

YINGLUCK SHINAWATRA 

ON THE WORLD STAGE 

THE APEC SUMMIT 

Bali, Indonesia 

October 2013 

Is an un-elected people's council more democratic than a democratically elected government? The opposition to Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra thinks so, and is trying to force her to resign by filling the streets of Bangkok and attempting to shut the capital down. Today was the first official day of the shutdown action; the story continues. Some reportage and analysis can be found here and here and here. 

Update January 21, 2014:  A State of Emergency declared; details here. 

BORIS YELTSIN IN THE NEWS TODAY II

WHAT ELECTIONS 

CAN BRING 

BORIS YELTSIN VOTING 
IN THE 1991 RUSSIAN 
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 
(the first) 
Moscow, June 12, 1991 

Pausing in casting his ballot to help 
the photographers get their pictures 

Yeltsin won 

Today Boris Yeltsin is the news as a comparison point in a Forbes piece by Melik Kaylan on "Understanding Egypt": 

"The last decade has introduced to the world the novel phenomenon of the genuinely re-elected dictator, the populist who gets successive mandates largely because he controls all information, much of the economy, starves opponents of funds, because he has delivered a measure of stability and because the alternative looks worse. The alternative might be what went before – Boris Yeltsin in Moscow...." 

Well.... 

"I VOTED!" PRIMARY ELECTION DAY, April 3, 2012

"THIS LITTLE LIGHT

OF MINE,

I'M GONNA LET

IT SHINE"

"I VOTED"

VOTING STICKER

April 3, 2012

PRIMARY ELECTION DAY

in 1/17 of U.S. Jurisdictions

No Purple Finger, Though

ELECTION 2012: SOCIAL ISSUES ARE COMING TO THE FORE AGAIN?

WE HAVE NOT HAD ENOUGH WARS?

(WE ARE ONLY SLIP-SLIDING

TOWARDS ONE WITH IRAN?)

&

THE ECONOMY IS GETTING "BETTER"?

SO BRING ON THE SOCIAL ISSUES AGAIN?

(ONLY SOME?

ONLY YOUR FAVORITES?)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE on CBS

("Rice: NOBODY LIVED IN AN INTEGRATED FASHION,

SINCE YOU COULDN'T GO TO A RESTAURANT...."

&

ANDY WARHOL Being WARHOL

(or playing WARHOL) on PBS

DUELING TVs #9

LYUDMILA PUTIN RE-EMERGES; VLADIMIR PUTIN IS TO BE PRESIDENT AGAIN

LYUDMILA PUTIN

THEN

LYUDMILA PUTINA

March 26, 2000

at her polling place in Moscow

Here she stands by her man, Vladimir Putin (or rather, walks by him) on that day in 2000 of Putin's first election as president; here she stands with him at the heights at the 2006 G-8 summit in St. Petersburg.

The last reported sighting of the Putins together was in 2010 (see here).

Today Putin's official website leads its coverage of the election by announcing that "Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila vote at in [sic] the Russian presidential elections." (The Russian version is here.) Official photographs of the event, showing the Putins together (standing, and sitting while he marks his ballot) can be found here.

There is a video of the president-to-be-again casting his ballot here (along the way he drops one of the two ballot papers; retrieves it himself). Later he celebrates his victory, and cries (tears up?).

Just for comparison (ballot boxes and all), here is Boris Yeltsin voting in his first Russian presidential election (June 12, 1991).

RUSSIAN POLITICAL SATIRE THEN & NOW

ELECTIONS AHEAD

"PUTIN-SAN" ON THE SATIRICAL PUPPET SHOW "KUKLY"

IN THE RUN-UP TO THE 2000

RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

With Russian parliamentary elections coming next month, and the presidential election in March 2012 (and Vladimir Putin an announced candidate), the BBC has an informative analysis of some popular pushback to Kremlin media control (here). As Stephen Ennis writes, "TV political satire has been virtually extinct in Russia since the puppet show Kukly ... disappeared from the screens shortly after Mr Putin came to power." The photograph above shows Putin as a martial arts master on "Kukly."

Now there is YouTube: "The videos are in a variety of genres - political polemic, satire and song - but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country's leadership - Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia." Some of them have had over one million views -- "unprecedented" in "a just a few weeks." (There are sixty million internet users in a population of 140 million plus.)

Putin's negatives are said to be up.

The general law of politics probably still applies: You can't beat somebody with nobody.

GENNADY ZYUGANOV DOES NOT BECOME PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA, July 3, 1996

BORIS YELTSIN

WINS

RE-ELECTION

July 3, 1996

GENNADY ZYUGANOV

at the time of the 1996 Russian presidential election

It has been fifteen years since July 3, 1996, when the head of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, forced the incumbent Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, into a run-off, and Yeltsin won.

Back in February of that year Zyuganov had looked like the Darling of Davos. Yeltsin was third in the polls, trailing even Grigory Yavlinsky, the perennial liberal loner. Tycoons and media alike attending the World Economic Forum in Davos competed for the attention of the Communist leader, who seemed on track to become the next president of Russia, and the first Communist Party head elected to that post.

It was barely four years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the triumph of "the West" over "communism."

For some indication of the excitement Zyuganov generated at Davos 1996, see here.

For evidence of Zyuganov being the big media "get" of the Forum, see here.

For more information about the 1996 election, see "The Phoenix," here.

More to come in

"RUSSIA REDUX"

BORIS YELTSIN AND RUSSIA'S FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, TWENTY YEARS LATER: COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION

RUSSIA'S FIRST 

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

JUNE 12, 1991 

BORIS YELTSIN, 

THE WINNER OF THAT ELECTION, 

RUSSIA'S FIRST 

DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT, 

CASTING HIS BALLOT 

For more of the story, and a look at what happened after the voting, see here 

For a Washington Post analysis in the context of the run-up to the end of the USSR, see here 

HARVEST MOON: MID-TERM ELECTIONS IN FORTY DAYS

HARVEST MOON 

FIRST FULL MOON 

OF THE AUTUMN 

FORTY DAYS TILL MID-TERM ELECTIONS U.S.A. 

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN LADA: PUTIN ON THE HUSTINGS?

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN LADA 

VLADIMIR PUTIN 

ON ELECTION DAY, MARCH 26, 2000: 

HIS FIRST RUN FOR THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENCY 

The former president, once again prime minister, made a tour of Siberia in a Lada and set off speculation (such as here) that he is campaigning for a 2012 run to re-gain the presidency. 

For more on Vladimir Putin, see "Putin Observed." 

FOURTEEN-YEAR OLD NEWS FLASH: YELTSIN WINS -- BUT FAILS TO SHOW UP AT HIS DESIGNATED POLLING PLACE

BORIS YELTSIN 

IS RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 

OF RUSSIA 

IN A RUN-OFF 

("Second Round") 

July 3, 1996  

Posting re Round One, here 

THE MEDIA WAIT FOR 

BORIS YELTSIN 

WHO DOES NOT SHOW 

BUT BEATS HIS COMMUNIST CHALLENGER 

GENNADY ZYUGANOV 

"In these troubled times [winter 1989-99], an ailing Boris Yeltsin seems the almost too-perfect symbol for an ailing Russia. This is not how the second term of the first Russian president was supposed to turn out. Back in 1996, when the Communists under Gennady Zyuganov appeared poised to take over the presidency (they had already won a plurality in the Duma a half-year before), the ultimate rallying cry was "Better a sick Yeltsin than a healthy Zyuganov." The Communists, it was thought, could do positive harm; Yeltsin at least could hold the country together as the fruits of market democracy ripened. Should worse come to worst, there were constitutional provisions for choosing a successor now in place; the Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, would take over for three months as acting president, and then elections would be called. There was also already at least one other obvious candidate with a proven track record of winning elections, Moscow's Mayor Yury Luzhkov. But the hope was that the reinvigorated Yeltsin, who had toured Russia during the election campaign, would move the country forward if given four more years." 

-- continued in THE PHOENIX: Yeltsin and the Future of Russian Leadership, by Gwendolyn Stewart 

FIRST RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN AN INDEPENDENT RUSSIA, June 16, 1996

FIRST POST-SOVIET 

RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

June 16, 1996 

BORIS YELTSIN COMES TO VOTE 

Moscow, June 16, 1996 

Wins first round, but not by enough to avoid a second round of voting 

Continued here 

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN UKRAINE II

IN HONOR OF

THE UKRAINIAN ELECTIONS II

With the second round of the Ukrainian elections today, and

all the talk about which direction Kyiv will take, here is a

photograph of two girls and bows in Kiev in 1984.

One of a series from Back in the USSR,

to be published in HERE BE GIANTS.