International observers made their decisions about Russia's Duma election yesterday: all organizations will send missions to Russia, except the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The opposition can only rely on its own
observers, based on the assumption that the presence of foreign experts won't make the campaign any more free or fair.

Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Chairman Vladimir Churov announced yesterday that the Duma election will be monitored by observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly. Only the ODIHR has declined to send observers. The CEC has taken this rejection into account, and the ODIHR's observer quota has been redistributed among other international organizations.

Senior Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev described the ODIHR's decision as "an oddly mistaken stance, which seems pre-arranged." Medvedev said: "I wouldn't want to suspect anyone of anything, but the ODIHR remained silent for a long time, even though
we explained exactly how and where they could obtain their visas - but then the ODIHR director made a trip to the United States, and straight after that the ODIHR rejected our invitation."

The PACE, for example, is now entitled to send 55 observers. "We're all satisfied so far," says Vladimir Dronov, head of the PACE department for inter-parliamentary cooperation and election-monitoring. "Almost everyone who wanted to go to Russia for the election will be able to do so."

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly hasn't yet decided how many observers it will send. OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Claus Bergman told us that the observers will definitely be there, and their monitoring will definitely be fair and unbiased.

European observer missions are expected to arrive in Russia on November 28. CIS observers will arrive on November 30, according to Bakytzhan Zhumagulov, a representative of Kazakhstan who is in Moscow already.

Vladimir Churov is confident that international observers won't find any substantial deviations from democratic standards. "The election will take place in calm conditions, in an organized manner, and Russian voters will be able to make their conscious choices,"
said Churov yesterday to an audience of Russian election observers at a meeting of the Public Chamber's coordination council of non-governmental organizations for upholding electoral rights. Churov's confidence was boosted by a report from Public Chamber member Andrei Przhezdomsky, organizer of the election complaints hotline (via telephone or Internet). Strictly speaking, Przhezdomsky's report only reiterated exactly the same data (on irregularities and measures taken to eliminate them) that he presented when he first
proposed the hotline in September. But Churov found this information sufficient to declare that "civil society" deserves the credit for the "calm and organized" atmosphere.

Meanwhile, opposition forces are only relying on their own observers. They don't trust Przhezdomsky's hotline, since they regard the Public Chamber as a pro-Kremlin body, not part of civil society.

Boris Nadezhdin, Union of Right Forces federal political council member, told us that the arrival of "international observers on the last day of the campaign is only a token tribute to civilized relations between modern states."

Oleg Kulikov, secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, said: "The number of international observers is so small that although they are officially present, it's as if they're not here at all."

Kommersant