Phantom Nature of United Russia and Its Lies, More than Its Corruption, Alienating Russians, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 7 – The phantom nature of United Russia and the lies its leaders continually tell have alienated Russians far more than the corruption and other misdeeds its upper ranks are guilty of, Abbas Gallyamov says. Indeed, the combination of these two facts explains why Russians trust it less than any other political institution in the country.

            The commentator, who earlier served as a Putin speechwriter, says that United Russia as a real entity “does not exist. Instead, it is a political phantom whose ideology comes from the president, whose activities from the government and the governors, and whose members are government employees with no choice but to join (realtribune.ru/edinaya-rossiya-i-ee-fantom-narod-ustal-ot-beskonechnogo-vranya).

            In reality, Gallyamov says, United Russia “doesn’t do anything good but in general it doesn’t do anything that bad either.” It simply doesn’t exist as a separate entity; and that is why, when elections require it to stand as a party, it fails because it isn’t that. Indeed, it really doesn’t have any existence of its own to speak of.

            According to the commentator, the Russian people sense this lack of a real existence in the congeries of activities which calls itself United Russia; and that is why their trust in it is so low and why they are not inclined to vote for those who have nothing more to offer than their membership in what many are inclined to call “the party of power.”

            Gallyamov insists that it is United Russia’s pretense of being something when it isn’t anything that “infuriates people most of all. People are more tired of endless lies of this kind than they are of outright abuses,” something those who push United Russia forward have not figured out but will have to live with the consequences.