Border Crossing Blog

Election?/Выборы?

It was March 14. The sun was shining brightly, and the snow was melting and making a dripping sound off the roof of my pre-fabricated housing. Was there an election here in this country to elect the President? I didn't notice. Of course, I had some kind of Russian stomach virus that caused me to spend election Sunday puking my guts out.

However, there was also no run up to the election. The only campaign signs I saw in the whole were some ads on bus stops for Moscow's erstwhile mayor Yury Luzhkov. It looked like the quaint kind of had one posts for school board of Moscow, Idaho not Moscow Russia and the ad said something to the effect like "we're a great team."

There were general election adverts of course. "Do a great service to your country. Vote!" or "Vote and win free stuff." These were the two themes posted all over the city. The comparison has been made to Communism when everyone vote, but there was only one candidate. Though, this was not the actual situation, it certainly appeared that way.

In fact, the non tv coverage, which at the moment is not controlled by the state couldn't even find anything to talk about. Posted by Aaron at March 17, 2004 02:06 PM