Word: campaign
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This was, however, an unusual election, and not just in the outcome. Outwardly democratic, it was in fact an exercise in political ruthlessness. The TV marathons that tracked Unity's surge were the nearest to Western-style elections that these polls got. Much of the campaign was an enigma. There were few rallies, cross-country tours by party leaders, debates or televised appeals. Instead there was what Russian politicians euphemistically call technology: a stream of invective on state TV. Most of this was instigated by the Kremlin and aimed at discrediting the one bloc thought to present any risk...
...vote for Putin. Immediately after last week's results were known, the Prime Minister's aides fanned out among the news bureaus of Moscow, driving home the message that their boss was a shoo-in for the presidency. They admitted slight embarrassment about the wildly biased coverage of the campaign on state TV. But, they maintained, Putin's endorsement of Unity was essential...
Unity's leaders, almost invisible during the campaign, were silent after it. It is a peculiar party. Unity has virtually no platform, almost no organization (especially in contrast to the nation's Communist Party) and only a handful of visible leaders. What it does have is the backing of the Kremlin. The party was formed last September by Sergei Shoigu, who serves as Putin's Emergencies Minister, a position in which he dealt with natural and man-made disasters...
...Home Depot campaign is an indication, the greens have a good strategy. Reluctant to be called anti-business, they refer to "market campaigns" rather than consumer boycotts. To deter corporations from taking timber from untouched parts of British Columbia's Great Bear Forest, the world's largest vestige of coastal temperate rain forest, the Rainforest Action Network, along with the Sierra Club and other groups, used a stick and carrot on the big customers of lumber companies. The activists blasted Home Depot for buying Great Bear wood, but when the chain stopped, they ran ads praising the decision...
Politicians are paying attention. President Clinton just toughened restrictions on auto emissions, and with the environment expected to be big in the 2000 campaign, Al Gore and Bill Bradley are fighting for backing from eco-groups. As environmental concern becomes a core value in the U.S.--and in all other industrial nations--conservationists realize they can call on voters and consumers to hold slippery politicians and corporations to account...