On Russia

I'm listening daily to Echo Moskvi - which is the best more or less credible radio source on whatever is happening in Russia. It seems that there is a lot of disillusionment about 2012 presidential elections - not because Putin was reelected (that was to be expected), but that people are not in the streets protesting (as they did in December, after parliamentary elections) and that the votes of so many could had been bought so easily (there was massive vote buying during these elections). Julia Latinina, the top political commentator, even mentioned yesterday, that to her mind the universal suffrage is The Problem - that only people who pay in taxes more than receive as subsidies from the state should be allowed to vote. See her analysis in Russian here

That's a false solution. Looking at what is happening in Russia, I can't help but notice some parallels with what was going on in Latvia after 2006 elections.  We had political parties that where obviously corrupt reelected again and seemingly supported by majority of people. Till one day the government did something so stupid and outrageous (tried to get rid of the head of agency that successfully fought against high level corruption), that we had some massive protest demonstrations that even brought down a government. Since then we've had 3 elections (including parliamentary elections and extraordinary parliamentary elections initiated by a referendum) and 5 referenda in just 5 years - and the changes are now massive.  " Old"  political parties have been thrown out of parliament or marginalised, the citizens are now much more politically aware and do not tend to vote for a political party just because it offers something populist.   But that doesn't mean that each time somebody called people to the streets, that people come.

I am, of course, aware that we in Latvia, had it much better. We had independent justice system to lean on, well-functioning anti-corruption bureau, SOME free media and, most importantly, the possibilities for new political parties to enter politics and replace the existing ones. Still I believe that wouldn't have mattered so much, if not for similar underlying changes in society that are also happening right now in Russia. There is an ongoing generation change - people who've lived in relatively prosperous circumstances, who've been abroad, who have much wider circle of acquaintance through Internet, who're more and more relying on Internet for daily news updates, - are different to the rest. The encouraging thing is that they are more and more  becoming  the opinion leaders also for the rest of society.

To my mind there are several lessons:

1) Once the most active and educated part of citizenry has woken up politically, it is close  to impossible to put it to sleep.  This never means that they will be prepared to take part in any protest activity there is, but that does mean that  politicians, public officials will have less and less scope for outrageous behaviour that was tolerated previously. When people have felt their power, they are not willing to settle with their silence taken for granted anymore. Eventually these new expectations will reach the decision makers themselves and even the most corrupt ones will change in a positive way (make no mistake - they still will be corrupt, but will be forced to be less blatant and more ingenious about this; to my mind that is a progress, because it signals that corruption has become socially unacceptable - and, if so, it gets easier to fight against it by introducing systemic changes and to replace corrupt officials)

2) Once a large part of citizenry (any - if those are the most progressive part of the society - by large I mean 2-5%) has become politically aware and are not willing to tolerate outrageous behaviour by public officials, their attitudes spread slowly but surely (in case of Latvia - it took approximately 3-4 years) to the majority of society. The changes come when it gets less and less socially acceptable to vote for a specific party, a candidate. Not that their competition should be perceives as ideal, but as " lesser of evils". When the most " evil"  parties/candidates are out of politics, then and only then it will be possible to seriously expect the politics/elections of ideas. That's what the last 3 rounds of parliamentary elections have shown in Latvia.

3) Every opportunity to improve your democratic institutions (courts, media, ways of mobilising people, conditions of political competition, guarantees of basic rights) should be used and encouraged. If it's not possible within the system, Internet can be used for online petitioning, activities etc. You never know which will be deciding factor which will set on the snowball effect, when changes start being inevitable. To my mind, for Latvia The Moment was introduction into constitution the possibility to call for new parliamentary elections via referendum. The political class was never quite the same afterwards. For other societies it might be something else. But don't hope or plan for one decisive breakthrough - the nonrevolutionary changes are always incremental. But even incremental changes add up to much. And sometimes it takes less time than you expected. If I remember myself thinking about politics in the beginning of 2007, I'd never have believed that by the beginning of 2012 so much would have changed.