“Une dictature est un pays dans lequel on n’a pas besoin de passer toute une nuit devant son poste pour apprendre le résultat des élections.”
“A dictatorship is a country in which one doesn’t need to spend a whole night at one’s workplace in order to learn the result of elections.”
–Georges Clemenceau
For background relevant to the sham “elections” being held in Donetsk and Luhansk and other areas in the Donbas under the control of Moscow’s puppets, the so-called “separatists” of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic”, see
(1) “Historical context for current Russian aggression in the Ukriane; The sham “referendum” on May 11, 2014 in the eastern Ukraine,” The Trenchant Observer, May 12, 2014.
(2) “Despite Concerns about Governance, Ukrainians Want to Remain One Country; Many Leery of Russian Influence, as Putin Gets Boost at Home,” Pew Research Global Attidudes Project, May 8, 2014.
The observations made in the articles above apply equally to the so-called elections being staged by the “separatists” in the Donbas.
They are neither free, nor fair, nor “elections” in the true meaning of that term, as defined in international human rights treaties and official guidelines of organizations such as the OSCE.
The fact that Russia announced it would recognize the election results before they were held simply underlines how accustomed the Russian government is to fixed elections. It was like a puppeteer approving of its own puppet’s actions. Any objective observer would have waited to see if the elections were fraudulent, and whether the internationally recognized standards for the holding of free elections had been met, before approving anything.
Moreover, the “elections” are being held in express violation of the terms of the Minsk Protocol of September 5, 2014, which called for them to be held on December 7 under the terms of a special law which was in fact enacted by the parliament and the government of the Ukraine.
No one should be fooled by the staged “elections” of groups who seized power by force, have held on to it with the help of Russian troops, arms and materiel amounting to an ongoing invasion, and in which the opponents of the “separatists” have been ruthlessly repressed by the use of terror.
News organizations should be careful not to repeat any numbers or “results” of the “elections”, because they are meaningless, like the results of old Soviet elections were meaningless. The most they should say is that the de facto rulers of these regions announced “x” results.
The real story in the Donbas today is the repression of the right to participate in government and in free and fair elections, which has been denied to the population under the dictatorial control of the “separatists”.
The following excerpts from the May 12 article cited above, following the independence referenda in the Donbas on May 11, apply equally to the elections of November 2, 2014:
As for the refendum itself, the following observations are in order:
There was no legally constituted electoral commission. There were no electoral rolls used to control who voted. There was no electoral body to which to appeal charges of corruption. There was no presence at voting tables of different parties. There were no independent international observers.
There was no mechanism to ensure the “results” announced by “separatists” (who gained their de facto positions through Russian aggression and the use of force) bear any resemblance to the number of ballots actually cast in favor of the proposal on the referendum.
There was no opportunity for opponents of a “yes” vote to be heard in the media, and those who might have spoken out for a “no” vote reported that they were subject to great intimidation and fear. A number of politicians who opposed the “separatists” were assassinated.
See David Blair (Donetsk) and Roland Oliphant,”The ‘disappeared’ whose voices will be silent in vote on self-rule in Ukraine’s east; Pro-Russian separatists continue to hold a number of prisoners against their will, in a campaign against dissent,” The Telegraph, May 10, 2014 (7:18PM BST).
The question on the May 11 ballot was essentially so ambiguous as to be meaningless.
The so-called referendum failed to meet the lowest standards of even the most blatantly corrupt of Soviet and Russian sham elections.
Why Western news media would give any weight to referendum “results” secured under these conditions defies understanding.
The real story was about these factors which rendered the “results” meaningless. But by reporting the numbers again and again, Western media helped give credence to the erroneous belief that the election results had any significance at all, other than to check the box in Vladimir Putin’s step-by-step stretegy in his war of aggression against the Ukraine.
The under-reported real story about the May 11 “referendum”
There is a real story about the gross violations of internationally protected human rights that are underway in the eastern Ukraine, including the right to political participation and free and independent elections, the rights to freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and the right to public order in which the physical integrity of each human being is protected from violation by others, including the rights which protect individuals from the depredations of armed thugs acting in concert with foreign special operations forces who have invaded the country.
The story in the eastern Ukraine is about these human rights violations, and Russian involvement, and not merely about the various steps of Putin’s plan of aggression aimed at subversion of the rights of Ukrainian citizens to the political independence, territorial integrity, and sovereignty of their country.
The Trenchant Observer
