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Vladimir Putin's Election Day Choice
// Between Northern dishes
Russian President Vladimir Putin cast his vote yesterday, in spite of the efforts of an LDPR observer to impede him. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov draws attention to the fact that the ceremonial handing over of power began in the restaurant Expedition immediately after voting and will last until May in the Great Kremlin Palace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin voted in the Academy of Sciences building on Leninsky Prospect. One of the members of the local election commission came up to journalists and said softly, “Over there, you see, there's an old lady sitting. There. With the crutches. When you walk past her, be careful.”
“Mot to step on her foot?” I asked.
“No. She can unexpected stick out her crutches as you pass,” the worker said. “We walk past her with caution, but she has respect for us.”
I asked why she was sitting there. We were talking about Precinct No. 1, where the president was to arrive to vote at any minute. Could an old lady just sit here like that?
“She's registered as an observer from the LDPR,” the election worker said, wincing. “That's the problem. She got here at 8:00. She doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't even answer questions. She just sits and watches.”
We were standing behind the woman who would give Putin his ballot. When he went to fill it out, we would move closer to the exit to ask some questions when he emerged. That meant passing the old lady.
At any other time in any other place, they would have picker her up and put her where they wanted. But on the day of the presidential election, she was untouchable. And she knew it better than anyone, I think. That was why she didn't respond to external irritants. I think the election workers were afraid that she would trip people because she was mysterious.
I saw a group of young people with backpacks and writing on their jackets come in. They attracted attention. One of them was so pale that he nearly glowed in the half-light of the building's foyer. I thought he was losing consciousness as well, wobbling on his feet.
I heard them talk to the election workers. They had absentee ballots, which allowed them to vote their and, apparently, at the same time as Putin.
You couldn't say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only here could they do what the journalists were doing too – asking Putin questions to his face.
But I began to understand that at least one of them – the deathly pale one – was more worried about what his won face than Putin's. He started to try to talk his companions out of their quest, saying they had done all they could, and no one could do any more.
His friends weren't listening. They traded their absentee ballots certificates for real ballots and were standing with ballots in hands thinking about what to do next. They seemed to think voting was a dumb idea and realized that they had made a false start. Putin hadn't shown up yet and they were running out of time.
“So,” said one of them quietly, “we'll take our ballots and leave.”
”What are the bolts for?” another asked.
“To prove we did it.”
And they left, with obvious relief.
One the table where Putin was to sit was a list of addresses, a ruler and scissors – strange items at first glance. The ruler was to make it easier to run down the list in search of voters' names. Chairman of Precinct No. 2074 Valery Balakhnin explained the function of the scissors loudly for all present.
“I'll explain,” he said formally. “When someone comes to us with a absentee ballot certificate, it has to be cut in half!”
He smiled broadly as he said this.
From time to time, Putin's neighbors by registration came in. They were not as famous as their neighbor, although there was Ella Pamfilova, chairman of the president's council on cooperation in the development of civic institutions and human rights, among them.
“Who will you vote for?” I asked her.
She paused pensively. Most likely she was thinking about what to answer, not whom to vote for.
“Well, not for Bogdanov,” she said lustily.
“Why not?” a correspondent from Mayak radio asked.
I don't like soccer,” she replied.
Putin appeared almost immediately after she left. Balakhnin charged at him. He glanced at the dozens of television cameras and made the only right decision: to stand to the right of the president and accompany him, leading by half a step. There is no possible way he could have made himself better seen.
As he led them to the table, Balakhnin explained something to the president and his wife, gesticulating wildly.
“Where should I sit,” Putin asked.
“Here!” Balakhnin indicated a place that was unseen by any TV cameras.
“Not there!” roared the journalists.
“I said there,” Balakhnin said. “But you don't have to.”
“You have confused us completely,” commented Putin, sitting in a different chair.
“The main thing, after you make your checkmark, don't go to the ballot box right away, like last time,” Balakhnin said in a hurry. “Then I don't know what to do.”
Clearly, there had been a problem in the past.
“So what should I do?” the president asked.
“Well, you have to wait a little.” Balakhnin cast a guilty glance at first lady Lyudmila Putina.
The president nodded and asked, “Are these the ballots?”
“Well, yes.” Balakhnin began to heat up. “This is for the election to the municipal assembly and this is for… well, you know…”
”I know,” the president affirmed and took the ballot for the municipal assembly. “Three people here, right?”
”Yes yes!” Balakhin confirmed.
Putin took the ballot for president and asked quietly, “Here one person, right?”
He looked at Balakhnin with amusement. The precinct chairman was speechless.
The president knew a little too well.
He spent two or three minutely studying the ballot before marking it. He spent a long time looking at the candidates' names, as if he had never sent them before. That was entirely possible, since it was the ballot for the municipal assembly. (Or was it the candidates for his job? How can se be sure?)
Lyudmila also thought about something the whole time and then the president finally went to the ballot box alone.
He was not there alone for long. The old lady with the crutches, who had remained impassive the whole time, suddenly laid the crutches aside and alighted on a collision course with the president. Security agents wanted to stop her, but Putin stopped them.
She spoke with him for seven minutes. One person can tell another their whole life story in that time, if they try. That seemed to be what was happening. It was unprecedented. For the first time in his presidency, Putin was being prevented from making his free choice. He had no chance of doing so until the old lady, who had a light and almost rhythmic step, backed off.
The president didn't feel like answering questions after he voted. The standard question about his mood elicited the standard answer. He left quickly. I found out that he was in a hurry to go to Expedition restaurant, which was already super-fashionable before he dined there with Dmitry Medvedev, Viktor Zubkov, Boris Gryzlov and Sergey Mironov yesterday.
The president refused more than he ordered. He passed on the salmonberry juice because of its bright yellow color. Nor did he eat sea urchin roe, in spite of Medvedev's insistent recommendation. Medvedev had either been there before or had tried sea urchin roe on one of his many campaign expeditions. (He was in the Russian Far East not long ago.) “Only after thermal processing,” the president said. They had a good time at that table, and power passed from hand to hand over Siberian salmon, whitefish, Makalovo sauce and lingonberry juice.
It was an entirely different matter back at Precinct No. 2074. The reporters were torturing the old lady, who had returned to her place and was not talking again.
They asked her many questions, “What did you say to the president?”, “Why won't you talk?”, “Do you need a doctor?” and “Where is the library?”. She didn't answer any of them. She didn't say a word, not even to the woman journalists who held her hand for half an hour like daughters in a moment of distress.
Balakhnin stated firmly that the woman, Valentina Morozova from Tula, a registered election observer from the LDPR, had broken the law. “She interfered in a free election!” he fumed. She was supposed to observe.”
Balakhnin could not deny himself the pleasure of telling about how he scolded the president for shirking 24 days of work. “I told him that the last elections were on March 26, and these on the 2nd,” he informed us.
When I observed that the inauguration ceremony would most likely take place on May 7, as it did eight years ago, and that Putin has been working the entirety of the intervening period, Balakhnin did not react, turning instantly into a copy of the old lady from the LDPR.
Later, I found out what she had told the president. She needs an operation on her spine. That's what she talked about.
That is, she didn't ell the president her life history, she told him her medical history.
Sometimes the two are the same.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 03, 2008
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