Fair and Open Elections - Everywhere

This article in today's Guardian talks about fraud, bribery and intimidation in Sunday's parliamentary election in Russia. People are being rounded up at workplaces and made to go and vote in a particular polling station; they are told they might lose their jobs if they don't vote for Putin's party (which is actually quite popular, so does he need this?).

Never mind; the Georgian election will be open and fair, just as the Lithuanian president urged them to be. So it'll be pure rumour that people in the army have been told that their personal loans will be paid off if they vote a particular way and that the leading party approaches businesses asking them for money or else they will be closed down (they need to get the money for those loans somewhere). And the fact that people go round houses and places of employment asking their neighbours and fellow employees to sign that they will vote in a particular way, is pure imagination, no?

Will the former Soviet Union ever get out of this immoral morass? I'm glad I live in a country where such things are not quite so possible any more (though we do get some duffers as politicians sometimes...)