SINOGRAPH Reform doses differ for
China and Russia By Francesco
Sisci
I would like to thank The Economist,
si parva licet compenere magnis, for the
article "How to rig an election", [1] expounding
on all Vladimir Putin did in recent months to win
last week's presidential vote in Russia.
The Economist explains that Putin's
actions are not pulled from the old bag of tricks
used by dictators, like beating your opponents
into silence or lining up voters and making sure
they cast pre-stamped ballots. His methods are
more modern. "You can have an election that looks
all right on the outside but guarantees the result
you want," argues the newspaper. "And nobody will
be able to object. The secret is to obey the rules
"having first written them yourself".
It
all started with television and went on to
gerrymandering, The
Economist writes, and
here we modestly start to be confused. In fact,
the use (and abuse) of television in elections is
an important issue in mature democracies. Some
decades ago, Ronald Reagan was accused of winning
his presidency because he was an actor able to
manipulate his image on television, [2] and more
recently, in Italy Silvio Berlusconi has been
under attack for his overwhelming control of the
medium. Yet neither leader was accused of rigging
elections.
Similarly, gerrymandering was
born in the cradle of modern democracy, America,
as according to a standard definition the word
came from "the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry of
Massachusetts + salamander, from the supposed
similarity between a salamander and the shape of a
new voting district on a map drawn when he was in
office (1812), the creation of which was felt to
favor his party: the map (with claws, wings, and
fangs added), was published in the Boston Weekly
Messenger, with the title The Gerry-Mander." And
the political instrument has not been forgotten in
the West, as just two years ago Bill Mundell
produced a documentary on gerrymandering in
America. [3]
All this is not to say that
elections in America or Russia are the same, that
Russia is a model of democracy and America is not,
or anything like that. This is to say that in
order to hold on to power, Putin uses instruments
that were developed in a democratic system to play
within certain rules. This is surely not
beautiful, but perhaps it is better than no
elections at all or thugs checking on ballot boxes
with long sticks, as happened until a few years
ago in many parts of some democratic countries.
Things in Russia and with Putin's
elections are far from perfect, but there are
signs of improvement just because Putin is playing
with the democratic systems' old bag of tricks and
not with that of dictatorships. As here in China
the Great Helmsman almost said, "Democracy is not
a tea party" (or was is it, it is not the Tea
Party?), it takes quite a few bumps to get to a
full-fledged system; or as the forefathers of
Western civilization in Rome almost said,
"Democracy was not built in a day."
Russia
has no democratic tradition to speak of. Two
centuries ago, when the US was gerrymandering with
democracy, immense novelist Gogol was telling the
tragic-comic story of a person buying and selling
"souls" in a country where the majority of the
population were serfs, that is de facto still in
slavery, and only a tiny minority of aristocrats
and their minions were free. The system changed in
reality only with the Communist Revolution in
1917, which substituted the serfdom of the
majority of the population for the enslavement of
the totality of the population.
Glimpses
of freedom could be seen in Russia only in the
1980s with Mikhail Gorbachev's famous reforms, and
those were just these: glimpses fading into costly
illusions, as Moscow lost its empire by pursuing a
dream of socialist amendments. No matter how
unjust the Soviet empire, its loss - like
sometimes the loss of a sibling who is cruel but
still shares our blood - is still important in
Russia.
In a country with no democratic
tradition to speak of but with a strong imperial
sentiment, Putin harks back to the Russian Empire,
by for instance protecting and fostering the
Orthodox Church; he signals he is not giving up on
all of the Soviet empire by holding on to the
nuclear arsenal, by playing with the strategic
weapons of oil and pipelines, and by teaching a
lesson to unruly Georgia in 2008.
All of
this, the hold on tradition and empire, buys more
consent in Russia - or any country - than
television or gerrymandering. After all, if Putin
won in the first round, which was not certain, and
it is still an indication of the some degree of
support he has in the country. Moreover, are we so
sure that his challengers once in power would be
so much better than him? Communists were worse
than the Czar, and Putin was chosen by a person,
Boris Yeltsin, whom the Americans supported
against Gorbachev. Russia, like all nations, has a
historical logic of its own pushing leaders in one
direction almost independently from their own
will.
The real issue seems to be, can
Russia change its destiny and stop being a
geopolitical threat? Can it give up on the old and
dangerous idea of a Czarist or Soviet empire? It
is not an issue of name, but of substance.
Present Russia is hardly adequate for an
imperial role. It has oil, old-fashioned weapons,
and plutocrats who have grown to resemble the old
Czarist aristocracy. But it lacks the necessary
engine of a modern empire: a vibrant economy, like
that of China or India, but also those of South
Korea, Vietnam, and Brazil. [4] Without real
economic muscle, the political projection is bound
to stay weak, and arrogance or military posturing
could be used to compensate for the imbalance
between the two, economic weakness and political
ambition.
Russia, for its ambitions but
also for its healthy political development, needs
to groom a class of small and medium
entrepreneurs. The power of the modern aristocracy
- which, like that of the old one, is sickly
enmeshed with the gears and trappings of state
bureaucracy - must be drastically cut and
reformed. Without this, the whole Russian edifice
could crumble as it did in the past.
It is
on these structural weaknesses that the Middle
Eastern fever for "Jasmine revolutions" has spread
to Russia. It may be part of a complex American
plot to undermine enemy regimes, but just like a
normal flu, the Jasmine revolution attacks and
kills only weakened bodies. Nobody could dream of
living in a bubble, safe from all contagious
viruses; then strengthening the body - that is,
reforming oneself - is the best immunity against
the threat of revolutions now - or ever.
In this regard, the fact that, despite the
examples of Egypt and Syria, Putin chose
democratic tricks rather than outright repression,
seems a sign pointing in a good direction. He
saved himself and the world from the flames of a
revolution. The fact that he won the elections and
demonstrations seems to confirm it. After learning
in politics, can Putin move on and push for
economic reforms? This remains to be seen. This
should be the new root to expand and strengthen
the democratic system in Russia, as capitalism was
the basis of democracy in the West.
These
reforms are already late, and thus very urgent,
but they touch on entrenched interests surrounding
the president.
Here the destiny of Russia
once again crosses that of China. As Russia needs
greater economic reforms and then political
improvements, China needs the opposite: political
reforms and then economic restructuring. Two weeks
ago, a thick paper released by the World Bank
called for drastic economic restructuring while
also attacking the excessive power and monopolies
of state owned enterprises (SOEs). [5] It was very
strongly worded and cosigned by the China
Commission for Reform of the State. In his speech
on March 5 at the National People's Congress (NPC,
China's parliament), Premier Wen Jiabao mentioned
the word reform 70 times. [6] He has been very
vocal in calling for political reforms in recent
years.
Now, as in the 1980s, when both
countries were just beginning to tinker with
reforms, perhaps we have to see who gets the
formula right. But besides the formula, both
countries need reforms and, being incorrigibly
optimistic, one can say that the two countries are
both giving out some of the right signals. As now
winters fades and spring approaches, we shall see
if it is just a seasonal change or something of
more substance in China and Russia.
Notes: 1. How
to rig an election, The Economist, March 3,
2012 2. See, for instance, The Primetime
Presidency of Ronald Reagan: The Era of the
Television Presidency (1988), by Robert Denton. 3.
See here.
4. Why
the EU needs Russia, by Francesco Sisci and
Anna Zafesova, La Stampa August 3, 2008. 5. See here
for World Bank report. 6. See here
Francesco Sisci is a columnist
for the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore and can be
reached at fsisci@gmail.com
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