De slechtste politicus (wereldwijd) van 2007

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Op maandag 31 december 2007 16:53 schreef OA het volgende:
Mugabe.

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 00:00 schreef sneakypete het volgende:
Het lijkt erop dat mugabe zijn macht nog niet verliest dusja eigenlijk doet ie het gewoon heel goed.

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Op maandag 31 december 2007 20:24 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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Je kent Loekasjenko niet

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Op dinsdag 1 januari 2008 20:25 schreef more het volgende:
Chavez, Al Gore, Mugabe, Mbeki (HIV veroorzaakt geen aids) Ella Vogelaar, iedereen van Groen Links.

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 19:57 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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Ik vind dat jij dit wel kritish bekijkt
de USSR is tog wel heel anders dan RU van nu
Maar ik vind dat Poetin benadeeld wordt, in het land is iedereen blij met hem en de mensen stemmen echt op hem. En de kranten schreven dat hij een Nat. leider wilde worden e.t.c en een 3e termijn wilde. Is dat gebeurd : nee ? Nu wordt gezegd dat Poetin zijn macht als toekomstig min.president gaat misbruiken- en straks weer een ander vooroordeel

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 20:56 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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Een dictator houdt zijn macht ... hij niet

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 21:23 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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w8
het volk geeft hem vrijwillig de macht en ik ben er geweest : hij houdt daar echt niet alles in de greep en hij heeft zoveel goede dingen gedaan... Hij treedt af en houdt gelukkig een oogje in het zeil... ze zeggen wel dat hij de enige is die alle Kremlin bazen bij elkaar kan houden ... en in het land is er ook gewoon geen goede oppositie : communisten, extremalisten (de meesten nemen hen niet eens serieus)
Waarschijnlijk heeft Poetin een aantal stemmen van de com. gejat ... maar zelfs de oppositie moet bekennen dat hij toch had gewonnen (JABLOKO) Jabloko betekent letterlijk appel

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 21:51 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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Dit bedoel vergelijkingen van Poetin met Stalin of Hitler
Er is op dit moment gewoon geen oppositie
Jeltsin wordt ook altijd leuk omschreven in de kranten als de vriend va het westen, maar voerde daar een veel smeriger verkiezingscappange en heeft heel Rusland kapot gemaakt.Wie zegt dat die vrouw door Poetin is vermoord. En persvrijheid is er nu echt wel genoeg... nogmaals ik heb het met mijn eigen ogen gezien.... al deugde de verkiezingscampagne niet helemaal, wordt elk klein detail in de ned. kranten groot opgeblazen... het lijkt wel een soort propaganda

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RUSSIA
The Problem of My Country
A dissident looks homeward

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY, WITH PAVEL STROILOV

When the news got out that I was going back to Russia to challenge Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor in the 2008 presidential election, an English friend of mine called. (I have lived in England for many years.) “Before you go, make sure that you have your last will written,” she advised. “Come on,” I said. “You know I hate writing. It is bad enough to have to write my manifesto, which I am doing now.”

This was quite true, not only because I hate writing as such, but also because I had completely forgotten the Russian keyboard over the last 15 years. Yet I had to write that election manifesto, and do many other things I don’t enjoy. It’s not so much that I want to be president of Russia; as a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I would hate the job. But there are situations in life when you have to do all you can, even if there is hardly any hope for success.


* * *

I had believed that Russia was a hopeless case ever since 1993. After the Soviet Union collapsed, I advocated a Nuremberg-style trial of the Communist regime, followed with a radical de-Communization of the country. But the new Russian elite, like many in the West, opposed that idea as a “witch hunt.” As a result, it never happened, so the witches have risen again to hunt us now.

Having failed to condemn the Soviet regime and its crimes against humanity, Russia lost its last hope for recovery. As I predicted in 1993, in my book Judgement in Moscow, the country was doomed to decay and eventual collapse. So it seemed pointless to me to go there anymore. The Russian government agreed with me on that: Ever since 1996, its Foreign Ministry repeatedly denied me a visa.

The outlook seemed very gloomy for a long time, but nobody could then foresee just how very bad the reality would turn out to be. Who, back then, would have expected a restoration of the KGB’s reign of terror? That Russia would again have dozens of political prisoners, some of them in psychiatric torture chambers? Indeed, that Russia would once again become a global threat?

Naturally, what appalled me most was the growing number of political prisoners. Mikhail Trepashkin, the lawyer who represents survivors of the 1999 apartment bombings — a series of terrorist acts blamed by the government on Chechen extremists — has been imprisoned for his investigation of the attacks. His inquiry led him dangerously close to uncovering the role of the FSB — Russia’s domestic-security service and successor to the KGB — in the bombings. So the FSB planted a gun on him (a standard trick in today’s Russia) and also charged him with disclosure of state secrets, alleging that he had carelessly left some top-secret documents of the old KGB lying around in his apartment.

Mikhail is asthmatic. I know how easy it is to kill an asthmatic in jail — and that is exactly what his prison guards are trying to do. They deny him medicine; they put him in a newly painted cell with no fresh air, so he is, slowly but literally, suffocating.

Boris Stomakhin, a journalist who edited a small online newsletter, has been imprisoned for his criticism of Putin’s regime. His writings were ruled to constitute an “instigation to extremism,” an ill-defined offense recently introduced into the Penal Code. Trying to get away from the FSB thugs who came to arrest him, Boris jumped out the window, and broke his spine and leg. Once he was arrested, he got no decent treatment; as a result, he ended up practically paralyzed. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and was transported to a GULAG (or, as it is commonly called now, PutLAG) camp. He is denied any special treatment as a handicapped person there; he is even denied warm clothes.

Perhaps the most sinister feature of Putin’s neo-Soviet regime is the restoration of psychiatric repression. In the old days, it took us 20 years of persistent international campaigning to stop the Soviet abuses of psychiatry against political opponents. If there was one feature of the Communist regime that I hoped was finished forever, that was it. And yet, there have been alarming reports about people in Russia being once again put in lunatic asylums for their criticism of authorities. The latest case of that kind, as far as I know, is that of Andrei Novikov, who has been hospitalized because of his articles criticizing the regime.

The overall list of today’s political prisoners is quite long: Igor Sutyagin, Valentin Danilov, Zaurbek Talkhigov, Zara Murtazaliyeva . . . Once the machinery of persecution has gained momentum, one can be sure that there will be many others whose names and cases we might never even hear about. Of course, I have tried to campaign for those people in the West. Nor was I silent about the other atrocities of the current Russian regime, such as the ongoing war against Chechnya. Alas, all my efforts were in vain: The West was preoccupied with its “global war” on terrorism, and was anxious to keep Russia on board as an alternative source of oil and gas. What is one man suffocating in prison — or even several dozens of political prisoners — compared with all that? So the West stood, to all intents and purposes, united with the KGB. Some even went so far as to claim that at least one KGB lieutenant colonel had something like a soul (maybe a very small one, and obviously not immortal, but it still could be seen in his eyes). Not for the first time, the West was building its friendship with Russia on our bones.

In a word, the situation seemed increasingly desperate. However, as an old political prisoner myself, I couldn’t take no for an answer, thus letting my brothers die in jails. So what could I do to prevent that?


* * *

One thing that today’s Kremlin really fears is that next year’s presidential election, rigged as it certainly will be, may trigger a wave of mass protests, not unlike those that overthrew Moscow’s allies in Ukraine and Georgia. Of course, it would be a miracle if it really happened in Russia; but that miracle is Russia’s last hope.

My good friend, chess champion and human-rights activist Garry Kasparov, has been already doing all he can to help the Russian opposition prepare for such a scenario. He has had some success; but the society at large remains apathetic, while Garry’s own forces are deeply divided, ranging from extreme Communists to extreme anti-Communists. All of them could unite to demand fair elections, but they could agree on neither a common candidate nor a common platform. Even though Garry is doing a great job — much better than I had hoped — this is not enough.

That was the situation when, in late May of this year, a group of Russian intellectuals — mostly journalists and academics — declared they wanted to nominate me for the presidency. It would mean a lot of hard work, with little hope for good results. But it was my chance to help the opposition and the political prisoners — two categories that tend to merge in today’s Russia. I accepted, quoting the old toast, once a favorite of the dissidents in the Soviet Union: “To the success of our hopeless cause.”

Over the summer, several remarkable things happened.

First, I suddenly topped the polls — well above Putin, let alone his possible successors. Certainly, all the major pollsters never included me as a possible choice. Only a few online polls allowed my name as a choice; but wherever I was included as a candidate, the first place was mine. Of course, this represented only one segment of the Russian population: those who have access to the Internet (the majority do not) and use it to visit political websites. But it was something.

Second, the Central Electoral Commission solemnly announced urbi et orbi that they would never, ever, register me as a candidate. They cited several hastily concocted legalistic excuses for that. Around the same time, its chairman, even more solemnly, swore “by his beard” that the elections would be absolutely fair.

Third, groups of supporters mushroomed in various regions from Kaliningrad to Sakhalin. The Russian Internet was filled with stories presenting either utopian or apocalyptic visions of my future presidency. The biggest publisher in Russia said he wanted to reprint my autobiography, first published some 30 years ago, since the dissident experience was becoming increasingly relevant to today’s Russia.

So there is, among a substantial minority of Russians, interest in the movement I represent. Why is the majority apathetic? The problem with the Russian people is not that they love the KGB and its tyranny — they really don’t. But after being repeatedly betrayed by their democratic leaders, they have ceased to believe in the possibility of change. Their attitude is best summed up in a popular joke about a crow sitting on a tree with a piece of cheese in its beak. A fox approaches and asks it, “Will you vote for Putin?” The crow remains silent. “Well, can’t you answer a simple question? Yes or no?” “Yes!” the crow finally says. The cheese falls down; the fox grabs it and runs away. So the very sad crow sits on the treetop and muses: “Well, suppose I would say no — would that change anything?”

Recent history has given Russians good reasons to harbor such an attitude. So most of them, even when appalled at the regime, would not go to the streets to protest. They would not even vote; after all, the best choice they ever had was between a Communist and a KGB colonel.

My candidacy is, nonetheless, more likely to do well among the currently apathetic than among those who would vote for another opposition candidate (if, that is, there will be such a candidate in the actual election). This is because I am very different from any of the candidates they have been offered in the past 20 years. The whole political establishment of Russia — Left, Right, and Center — was the flesh and blood of the Soviet regime; even the sincerest anti-Communists, like Boris Yeltsin, were all former Communists. Practically all the politicians, then, were to some extent compromised. I am not — and this alone inspires people’s curiosity, if not support.

Furthermore, my own view of the situation is very similar to that of these millions of alienated people. I have little hope that Russia can be changed for the better in the foreseeable future, and the idea of getting involved in Russian politics makes me sick. Yet what is happening there is so outrageous that I simply must try to do something. If I say we have reached the point when every decent man must fight even if there is no hope for victory — then they know it must be true. Only Russians can quite understand that paradox: We start to act only when it is hopeless.


* * *

The integrity of Russian electoral commissioners is well-known; so if they said they would never register me, they probably cannot go back on their word. However, I can still try to influence the electoral debate. So — apart from my manifesto, which outlined the measures a democratic president would have to take to dismantle the KGB regime — I brought another document with me to Moscow. It was an appeal to all the presidential candidates to join my pledge to implement the following five points if any of us comes to power:

1. Release all political prisoners.

2. Stop political persecution and review the legislation used for it today.

3. Stop abuse of psychiatry for repressive purposes.

4. Stop law-enforcement agencies’ use of torture and cruel treatment.

5. Provide for a fair and independent judiciary as soon as possible.

If there is any platform capable of uniting the diverse opposition forces from Communists to anti-Communists, this is it. Moreover, once these five points are on the table, every candidate, even Kremlin-sponsored, will have to run either for them or against them, the latter being a rather awkward position.

Only one of the other democratic candidates offered immediate support for my five-point pledge: Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the Yabloko party, who used to be a major right-of-center politician. I had a long meeting with him; he talked about the need to participate in the December parliamentary elections — even though Putin’s electoral rules are rigged against opposition parties — and also said he was prepared to ally his party with any other opposition organization that may emerge. The other opposition leaders sent messages saying that they want to stay, or get, in touch with me in the future. Since I have no personal political ambitions, they could well see me as a good choice for a mediator. If I can unite them on the basis of my five points, that is exactly what I want.


* * *

Naturally, the two largest television channels, both of which are state-controlled, ignored my visit completely. Some smaller independent radio stations, some of the newspapers, and a cable channel, REN-TV, gave me some coverage. (REN-TV has an audience of up to 50 million.)

By the fourth day of my visit, hostile media reports started to appear. A pro-KGB paper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, published a brief article that described me as sitting melancholically in a bookstore, promoting my book, until someone offered me a cup of tea — and I, being a “defector” like the murdered Alexander Litvinenko and obviously scared of Polonium-210, dashed to the airport and was off to London. This was a ridiculous, transparent lie: I was scheduled to address a rally in central Moscow within two days, so everyone could see that I had not left.

The following day, amazingly enough, the very same journalist who wrote that piece about me, Yulia Youzik, made a post in her blog — saying what a nasty liar she was, libeling an honest man for a few rubles. She shared many of my views, she wrote, but she had to feed her children. The morning after that, her editor fired her.

So what was originally intended to be a nasty little smear turned into a big scandal that backfired on the authorities and their propaganda machine. Long after I left, all Moscow was still discussing it actively — and indeed there is a lot to discuss. Just as in Soviet times, most of the people who serve the present regime are actually its secret haters. Few of them have the courage to repent their hypocrisy as Youzik did; but many more live with similar private anxieties. The chairman of the Electoral Commission, the very man who swore by his beard to hold a fair election provided there were no inconvenient candidates, sent a messenger to me while I was in Moscow. He wanted to have a signed copy of my book. Sure enough I signed it for him, and under the usual inscription I wrote our old slogan from Soviet times: “Respect your own Constitution!”


* * *

The final event of my visit was a rally in Triumfalnaya Square, formerly Mayakovsky Square, the very place where our dissident movement was born almost 50 years ago. Moscow City Hall authorized the rally, but presented us with the condition that no more than 500 people participate. That was odd: How on earth was I supposed to ensure that? Count the heads, and then tell the 501st person to go away? In earlier interviews, I said I was not going to do that: It was for the mayor of Moscow to go and count us if he wished.

So he invented a way: The place was cordoned off by the police and bordered with fences, with only a small entrance, where the policemen stood and, indeed, counted the heads. And, because of their historic experience, Russian people tend to avoid being counted, or registered, or anything like that. So, about 300 people went inside the fence, while almost the same number stood outside and listened.

“It is for the first time that Russian citizens will have such a choice at the elections: a prisoner or a prison-guard,” I said. “In this country, with our GULAG traditions, there are surely many more former prisoners than prison-guards. And I do not believe that any of them will ever vote for a prison-guard. . . . The imprisoned Russia, the tortured Russia, must say its word.

“They tell us that we are too few and the enemy is too strong. I came to remind you that 50 years ago we were even fewer and the enemy was much stronger. And yet, we are still alive, and they are dead.”

Mr. Bukovsky, one of the most prominent Soviet-era dissidents, is the author of the classic memoir To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter.

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 22:55 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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Zulke dingen bastaan... maar die bestaan ook in de VS. Dit is overdreven... ik heb het niet over andersdenkenden, maar ik wil gewoon laten zien dat er voor de meeste veel is verbeterd.... bijna iedereen van mijn kennissen heeft al een auto en zo kan je maar doorgaan.... voor de gemiddelde Rus was Jeltsin de duivel en is Poetin de messiah. Het klopt voor een deel wel...
Ik geloof alles hier graag maar wil nogmaals zeggen ... bijna alles is verbeterd.

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Op woensdag 2 januari 2008 22:55 schreef kos5000 het volgende:

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Zulke dingen bastaan... maar die bestaan ook in de VS.

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Op donderdag 3 januari 2008 11:14 schreef more het volgende:

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Politieke gevangenen in de VS? Man je bent niet wijs! Geen enkele Amerikaan zit om politieke reden in de gevangenis.