"We could write this off as clowning around and happily condemn the MPs on the internet if it was not for the fact that they drew salaries from our pockets," Alexei Navalny, a prominent political consultant, wrote in his blog. He called the MPs "impudent degraded creatures." Experts said the anti-democratic ruse was possible because the parliament's electronic voting system gave MPs about 20 seconds to cast their vote leaving the system open to abuse. President Dmitry Medvedev has criticised MPs' poor attendance record in the past but this latest scandal did not feature prominently in state media suggesting it was a scandal the Kremlin did not want to publicise.