THERE is no reason to doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin's longtime protege and designated successor, Dmitry Medvedev, will win the presidential election scheduled for March 2. Still, the principled refusal of European election monitors to send observers to Russia later this month was a symbolic gesture worth making. The Kremlin's conspiratorial innuendos about a Western plot to weaken the new Russian state only underlines the value of that gesture.
Explaining why the 56-member Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe would not be sending monitors to Russia, the agency's Christian Strohal said last week that Putin's government "has created limitations that are not conducive to undertaking election observance." This was a polite way of saying that restrictions on the monitors would make it impossible to observe and report on any election-rigging.
Russia's Central Election Commission wanted to hold the number of monitors to 75, and wanted them to arrive just three or four days before the vote. To be able to evaluate the fairness of a campaign, the observers generally like to be on the scene two months before election day. In the case of Russia, the decisive cheating has taken place in the run-up to the balloting. Lopsided TV coverage, the sidelining of genuine contenders, and Putin's lordly anointment of Medvedev as his legatee - these were the crucial maneuvers that ensured a sham election will confirm Putin's choice of a successor.
Leaving nothing to chance, the Kremlin even changed the rules for the funds it allocates to the Election Commission. If Medvedev wins more than 50 percent of the votes March 2, obviating the need for a second round, money that would have been spent on that second round may be distributed to commission members. In the past, those funds were designated for social welfare causes. Now the commission has a crude incentive to make sure there is no need for a second round.
Putin alluded to the rebuff of the monitors' requests Friday when he warned of foreign "interference in the course of political struggle in Russia." It is a commonplace among Putin's circle that Western election observers were instrumental in producing the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, former Soviet republics in which public revolts against rigged elections threw out pro-Russian regimes.
There is no reason for a new Cold War, and there are good reasons to eliminate unnecessary provocations of Moscow, such as the planned deployment of a faulty missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. But the West need not acquiesce in the Kremlin's suppression of grass-roots democratic groups, its abuse of human rights, and its disregard for democratic elections and the rule of law.
