The World

March will be a bad month for those who prefer their elections free and fair. On March 2nd (this Sunday) we have the Russian presidential election. Then on March 14th it is the Iranian parliamentary elections. And then on March 29th, Zimbabwe is holding joint presidential and parliamentary elections.

So much for the inevitable forward march of democracy.

It’s a bit of a toss up as to which of these three electoral charades will be the most blatantly unfair. But I would say that things will get progressively worse as the month goes on. The Russian election will be bad; the Iranian election will be really bad – and the Zimbabwe polls will be grotesque.Everybody knows that Dmitry Medvedev is going to win the Russian vote handily. Communist and ultra-nationalists candidates have been allowed onto the ballot – perhaps to make the Kremlin’s man look like a mainstream moderate. But there is no candidate to stand for a liberal alternative. And Russian media coverage of Mr Medvedev is fawning. Predictably foreign observers are not happy - and equally predictably their objections are being dismissed by the Russian authorities.

Liberals and reformists aren’t doing too well in Iran either. More than 2,400 candidates have been kept off the ballot on overtly ideological grounds. Iran has had the reputation as one of the most democratic countries in the region – which says more about the region than Iran.

Zimbabwe will round the month off. And I think it is a fair bet that Robert Mugabe will outdo all his undemocratic rivals for brazenness and brutality. To warm up for a month of electioneering, the Zimbabwean police have just issued a thinly veiled threat to shoot opposition demonstrators.

And in case you think that Zimbabwe will represent the last word in rigged votes – just wait for the Burmese junta’s referendum on its new constitution – scheduled for May.