Eurasia Daily Monitor
October 31, 2007 — Volume 4, Issue 202
RUSSIA FORCING OSCE OUT OF ELECTION OBSERVATION ROLE
by Vladimir Socor
Russia has disabled the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe from observing Russia’s parliamentary elections. Ahead of the
December 2 vote, the OSCE has yet to be admitted to Russia to observe the
electoral campaign. And when the observation mission will finally be allowed
in, its Moscow-dictated size and operating modalities will reduce that
mission to a meaningless role.
Election observation is the one remaining meaningful activity of the
OSCE and its specialized agency, the Office of Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights (ODIHR). If deprived of this role in Russia and the countries
that follow Moscow’s line on this issue, the OSCE would lose a major raison
d’etre. The Kremlin does not intend to kill the organization, but rather to
weaken it decisively and use it in the interest of Russian policies.
On October 30 the chairman of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission
(CEC), Vladimir Churov, announced that up to 400 foreign observers would be
invited to observe the elections; and of that total, only 50 observers would
be accepted in the OSCE/ODIHR mission. Invitations were sent out on October
30, thus making it impossible for the OSCE/ODIHR to perform its normal
long-term observation function ahead of the voting.
The remaining 350 invitations are being sent to the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the central electoral commissions
of several CIS member countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
several West European countries, and for some reason the Jordanian electoral
commission (Itar-Tass, October 30).
Russia’s 2003 parliamentary elections were monitored by a total of
1,165 foreign observers, including 450 from the OSCE (nine times more than
now). And they received the invitations in mid-September that year, almost
three months ahead of the December 9, 2003 poll (Moscow Times, October 26;
Interfax, October 30).
In a little noticed but significant detail, Churov listed PACE in
first place on the list of accredited organizations and OSCE/ODIHR last.
This order may signal a more lenient treatment of PACE for its complacency
about Russia’s non-fulfillment of membership commitments and the deal to
elect Kremlin-affiliated Mikhail Margelov as PACE president as of January
2008 (see EDM, October 11, 22). The Kremlin seems to be more concerned about
OSCE/ODIHR. In recent years, OSCE/ODIHR and PACE have conducted joint
election observation missions in a number of countries. Whether they would
do so in the upcoming Russian election is unclear.
The NGO Golos, one of Russia’s leading election-monitoring groups
(funded by the European Commission and USAID), points out, `400 foreign
observers is a very low figure for Russia[`s] huge territory and 95,000
polling stations’; and, furthermore, `The delay in sending invitations is a
major problem. Campaign monitoring is particularly important because most
violations usually take place during the campaign.’ Moreover, Russian NGOs
are no longer allowed to send observers to polling stations (Interfax,
October 30).
Russia had announced these intentions on September 18 in a detailed
document at OSCE Vienna headquarters. The gist of the proposal was endorsed
by several countries at the CIS summit on October 5 in Dushanbe. Apart from
restricting the OSCE/ODIHR mission to 50, Russia’s document defines `Basic
Principles of ODIHR Monitoring of National Elections.’ The principles and
modalities include, inter alia:
a.. limiting the number of OSCE/ODIHR observers to a maximum of 50
in any given national election, with no more than 5% of from any one
country;
a.. delaying any public assessment of the freedom and fairness of
the elections until after the country’s authorities have officially
announced the final returns;
a.. making the content and publication of the assessment subject to
authorization by the OSCE Permanent Council (where Russia wields veto
power);
a.. monitoring elections not only in post-Soviet countries but also
in Western ones (a tactic to disperse OSCE’s limited budgetary resources);
a.. appointing more senior staff and monitors from Russia and its
CIS allies to ODIHR and the OSCE/ODIHR election observation missions.
The organization blundered as usual under Russian pressure. It kept
the situation under wraps and tried to negotiate non-transparently with
Moscow under duress, instead of exposing the situation for public opinion.
The Russian document was available on the organization’s internal,
restricted-access website, but the OSCE did not show it to the media, thus
forfeiting the chance to generate countervailing pressure on Russia. The
organization’s chairman-in-office, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs
Miguel Angel Moratinos, and other OSCE officials embarked on hopeless
discussions with Russia for a solution.
Only in late October did the Russian document somehow leak to the
media, and a very few OSCE officials finally spoke. ODIHR Director Christian
Strohal termed Moscow’s redefinition `not a definition but a deconstruction
of principles and of ODIHR’s decade-long work;’ and a former OSCE
Parliamentary Assembly chairman, Bruce George, described Moscow’s move as
`part of an overall strategy to emasculate ODIHR’ (New York Times, October
25).
Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan
joined Russia in promoting these proposals at the OSCE. Armenia is headed
for a presidential election in early 2008. Kazakhstan, which held
parliamentary elections resulting in a one-party parliament this year, has
almost certainly forfeited its aspiration to chair the OSCE in 2009 by
rallying to Russia’s anti-OSCE move.
–Vladimir Socor