Elections and living standards in Lithuania, Georgia, and Moldova.
Kicking out the fascists from the Kremlin is a recipe for freedom and prosperity.
Spoiler: Lithuania, Georgia, and Moldova were all occupied by the Soviet Union. Georgia, and Moldova are still partly occupied by muscovy. The Kremlin’s presence is also felt stronger in Georgia and Moldova through musvovite populations. The Kremlin has also been able to strongly influence policy making in these two countries. Lithuania has shown the Kremlin the door. She also has a much smaller muscovite population. And importantly, Lithuania has been a member of both the EU and NATO since 2004.
Lithuania has a good track record of fair and free elections, while elections in Georgia, and Moldova have been fraught with cheating and manipulation as is always the case when the Kremlin has a stronghold in a country. Lithuanians not only enjoy more freedom than Georgians and Moldovans, their living standards are also significantly higher.
The Moldovian referendum and the first round of the presidential elections have been verified by the Kremlin. Since the Kremlin’s mouthpiece Mr Rolex, correction Peskov, accused the Moldovian government of wrongdoing, we know that the elections were carried out in a fair and free manner. This is also the opinion of the OSCE whose election monitors conclude that:
Moldova’s 20 October presidential election and constitutional referendum were well-managed, and contestants campaigned freely in an environment characterized by concerns over illicit foreign interference and active disinformation efforts.
The illicit foreign interference and disinformation is of course the kremlin trying to manipulate the results in its own favour. The conditions for clean elections in Moldova have incresed over time, especially since the previous pro-muscovite president lost.
OSCE has not yet published its report on the Georgian elections on 26 October but it has released an interim report about the preparations. In the report, the monitors reported that during the campaign the ruling party supporters intimidated the opposition candidates and their campaigns. There were verbal attacks, destruction of campaign materials and physical altercations. To be fair, also the ruling parties reported attacks on them.
Swedish parlamentarians who were in Georgia as OSCE observers observed many cases of vote buying, ruling party officials’ harassments of voters, and people voting more than once.
Elections in Georgia have always been problematic, to put it mildly. Following the Rose Revololution, conditions incresed significantly. Since the Georgian Dream came to power in the 2012 elections, the efforts to improve the elections have stopped.
Elections in Lithuania, have been deemed fair and free since the country’s independence.
The weaker the Kremlin’s footprint, the cleaner the elections.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The index measures the extent to which elections are free and fair. Free and fair connotes an absence of registration fraud, systematic irregularities, government intimidation of the opposition, vote buying, and election violence.
Populations, occupations and the EU and NATO.
All three countries were occupied by the Soviet Union and gained their independece in the beginning of the 1990s. Why are Lithuanian elections cleaner than the other two countries’ elections? The extent to which they are clean depend on how good they are at keeping muscovy at bay in combination with how hard the kremlin tries to interfere. I think there are three factors at play here, the share of muscovites in the population, the share of the country occupied by muscovy and membership in the EU and NATO.
Compared to Estonia, and Latvia where muscovites make up some 20% of the populations, only five percent of Lithuanians are ethnic muscovites. The share in Moldova was about the same in 2014 according the latest census. At the same time, some 30% of the population in occupied Transdniestria were muscovites. The share of muscovites in Georgia was less than one percent in 2014. The shares in the occupied Georgian regions Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, are probably almost 100% now due to the brutal ethnic cleansings that the kremlin has carried out in those parts of Georgia.
So, since muscovites make up significant shares of populations in Georgia, and Moldova, the kremlin tries harder to manipulate their elections.
Does the Lithuanian membership in the EU and NATO matter? Yes, the kremlin hates both organisations since its members enjoy freedom, prosperity and protection. Therefore, the kremlin tries very hard to fuck with the voters in Georgia and Moldova.
One way to influence voters is of course to spread disinformation about the country’s current government and its key political issues. The kremlin does that frequently. And the more muscovites that live in another country, the more the kremlin lies about the country’s politics. While muscovites only make up 5% of the Lithuanian population this year, they constitute 22% and 23% of the Estonian and Latvian populations respectively.
The larger the share of muscovites in the population, the more Kremlin lies.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicator measures the extent to which foreign governments and their agents routinely use social media to disseminate misleading viewpoints or false information to influence domestic politics in the countries.
As this year’s winners of the Economic Prize to the memory of Alfred Nobel have demonstrated, democracies are better at generating high living standards than others. The kremlin has not been able to sabotage the democratic institutions in Lithuania, but been more successful in Georgia and Moldova.
The lower interference from the Kremlin, the higher the prosperity.
Source: Our World in Data, and the World Bank.