Former Soviet republics use dirty tricks to sway polls Many have mastered the art of preserving the appearance of democracy while seeking to produce a pre-determined result

For the past month, thousands of passengers on Kazakh state railways have received their tickets in envelopes which unfolded to reveal a message in yellow, red and blue about who to support in last Sunday's presidential election: "Nursultan Nazarbayev - Our Leader!"

"Some people threw them back, saying they would vote for the opposition," said Aliya, a ticket clerk in Almaty, Kazakhstan's biggest city.

Elsewhere in Almaty, Marat, a student at a police training college, said 5,000 students there were warned they could be expelled unless they voted for the president. Serik, a second-year student at Almaty's University of International Business, says classmates received a talk from the dean advising them to vote for Mr Nazarbayev.

Combined with yesterday's criticisms of the election by international monitors, such anecdotes help explain how Mr Nazarbayev scooped up a Soviet-style 91 per cent of the vote. Yet 2,000 miles north-west, in Moscow, similar techniques were on display on Sunday in elections for the city parliament that produced a thumping majority for United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party.

One liberal leader called it the dirtiest Moscow election he could remember, while the party vying to be United Russia's main challenger was barred from the poll.

After last month's disputed parliamentary polls in Azerbaijan and Russia's breakaway Chechnya region, Sunday's elections highlight how many former Soviet republics have mastered the art of preserving the appearance of democracy while seeking to ensure elections produce a pre-determined result. Sometimes efforts backfire, as in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan recently; often they work.

"Former Soviet republics are worse than anywhere in the world in terms of the dirty tricks. Patterns of manipulation are more comprehensive," says Andrew Wilson, author of Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World.

Euphemisms have sprung up to describe the processes involved. First there is "political technology", ranging from using basic propaganda and damaging material against opponents to more sophisticated techniques. Mr Wilson says a political technology "industry" in Russia honed its expertise working with theregime of Boris Yeltsin, then that of Vladimir Putin, and now exports it around former Soviet republics.

Popular techniques include "cloning", or creating artificial parties to split opponents' votes - such as Russia's nationalist Rodina, or Motherland, party, created with Kremlin help in 2003 to take votes from the Communists. Rodina was excluded from Sunday's Moscow poll, ostensibly because of a racist campaign advertisement. In reality, some analysts suspect its Kremlin creators feared its popularity.

A second euphemism is use of "administrative resources" - using control of the media, police, security services, courts and electoral commissions to manipulate events.

Kazakhstan provided a case study of how to use such resources.

International observers found Kazakhstan's four TV channels devoted 49-77 per cent of pre-election coverage to the president himself. His biggest challenger, Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, received no more than 12 per cent.

Mr Tuyakbai's campaign said its literature had been seized, its workers were detained and harassed by police and meetings were broken up.

In Russia, Garry Kasparov, former chess champion turned opposition politician, says his attempts to address meetings in southern Russia this year were hampered by mysterious power cuts, hotel cancellations and his aircraft being unable to land because of "rocks on the runway".

In Azerbaijan's parliamentary election last month, observers reported whole villages being told they would lose utilities if they did not elect government-favoured candidates. Parliamentary election observers in Kyrgyzstan last February found widespread vote buying.

Many tricks come into play on election day, including ballot box stuffing, stealing opponents' ballot papers, or adding fictitious voters to lists.

Ukraine's presidential election last year took vote-rigging to new heights. Hundreds of supporters of Viktor Yanukovic, the government-backed candidate, acquired certificates allowing them to vote away from home and travelled around polling stations to cast multiple votes.

Ironically, perhaps, the mixed record of the three former Soviet republics that have experienced pro-democracy revolutions has become fodder for the political technologists. In Kazakhstan, Mr Nazarbayev played on the upheaval in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan after it overthrew its president in March to present himself as the stability candidate.

"We want peace and order," said Zemfira, a schoolteacher in Mr Nazarbayev's home town of Kaskelen. "We've seen what happened in other places."

Additional reporting by Arkady Ostrovsky in Moscow and Tom Warner in Kiev

Financial Times (London, England)