The demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtin led to a democratic dawn in most of the territories controlled by the Bolsheviks from the Kremlin. However, it proved to be a false dawn in several former Soviet states particularly in Byelorussia, the Russian Federation and now even in the case of Ukraine. Romania, one of the Eastern European allies of the then Soviet Union, also seems to be slipping back into authoritarianism.
It has taken Russia's strongman Vladimir Putin over 12 years to effectively roll back the democratic reforms of Boris Yeltsin. In post-Soviet Russia, signs are mixed. In some respects, Russia's attitudes suggest continuity with those of the old Soviet Union.
The role played by the US Presidential elections in the year 2000 in encouraging Putin to do so has never been seriously discussed. Just to remind ourselves, in case we may have forgotten, let us revisit those mind-boggling events. The US Constitution empowers its constituent states to conduct all elections. The state official in most cases who is in-charge of elections is a directly popularly elected functionary called the "Secretary of State". One must not confuse this functionary with the Secretary of State of the United State who is its Chief Diplomat.
In the year 2000, the Florida Secretary of State was Katherine Harris, a Republican politician. The Governor of Florida was Jeb Bush, the younger brother of the Republican Candidate George W. Bush. We now know that Bush lost the election in Florida by over 500 votes. However, Katherine Harris created a situation with recounts that threw the election into the lap of the US Supreme Court. In its 5-4 decision the said court handed the electoral votes of Florida to the Republican. The five judges of the US Supreme Court who ruled in favour of Bush were all Republican appointees. The majority judgement in this case truly belongs in the same category as some of the other infamous rulings of the said court.
The abuse of judicial power by the United States Supreme Court in this case showed the way back to authoritarianism to would-be autocrats. The misuse of the Constitutional Court by Putin to crush all opposition was a direct consequence. The fact that most people blame Putin's KGB past for his reversion to autocracy is only half the story. The KGB past may have been his motivation but the misuse of the higher Russian judiciary was the means through which he achieved his aims.
The irony is that the Arab Spring too is now being followed by another very close US Presidential Election. The 2010 mid-term elections in the US saw a Republican landslide. The result is that in most states the elected chief election officer, namely the Secretary of State, is a Republican. During the last two years these people have put in place a systematic legal framework to comprehensively suppress minority voting. The US is increasingly a minority majority country. In Arizona the official voter information leaflet, in English correctly sates the date of election as November 6. However, in Spanish the date of election is given as November 8. In Texas, a photo ID is now a must for voting. The gun permit is an acceptable form of photo ID, however, the university student ID is not. In Florida the new voter registration procedure was made so cumbersome that even the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan group, pulled out of this activity. Something that they had done in every election since women were given the right to vote.
The examples are far too numerous to list here. Needless to say, the Republican Secretaries of State elected in the 2010 elections, have shown many ways to rig the Franchise. Future would be autocrats in other countries will be profoundly grateful to them for showing the way. In Egypt we saw how the Generals used the Constitutional Court to rig the elections in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now the US Elections of 2012 have shown the world how to scientifically indulge in voter suppression. If Obama wins, on November 6, it will be despite this massive minority voter suppression effort. In case he loses, the said undertaking will have played a major role in bringing about arguably another illegitimate Republican Presidency.