RENEWED HOPES for plurality in Russia’s political system were disappointed yesterday as Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s party claimed victory in almost all of about 7,000 local elections held at the weekend.
The party’s next challenge will be to deflect the widespread claims of electoral fraud threatening to mar the win.
Faced with a 50 per cent jump in unemployment since last year, Mr Putin’s United Russia party needed the polls to show its popularity had not suffered from the effects of the financial crisis, observers said. For now at least, this goal appears to have trumped the liberal promises of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who pledged in August to break up United Russia’s effective monopoly on power.
Mr Medvedev’s vision for “new democratic times” and a transition to multiparty rule had shaped expectations for Sunday’s vote, but he appeared to go back on these plans as preliminary results were reported.
“The party has proven not only its moral but also its legal right to form the structures of executive power,” he said in comments posted on United Russia’s website.
He added that no major irregularities had been reported.
But as the ballots were counted, Russia’s main independent election watchdog, Golos, or Voice, issued a flood of reports claiming ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and other examples of fraud.
“It is coming from every corner of the country,” said Golos director Lilya Shibanova.
The most egregious violation was reported in Moscow, she added, where employers had threatened to fire workers if they did not turn out to vote.
“This shows just how deeply the ruling political machine has penetrated Russian society. Even local businesses have to comply,” said Ms Shibanova.
The two main opposition parties, Yabloko and the Communists, meanwhile, reported a practice that gained notoriety during the last parliamentary vote in 2007. Known as carouseling, it involves busing people from one polling station to another so they can cast numerous votes.
“The ruling administration apparently gave local officials carte blanche to ensure a high turnout for United Russia,” said Nikolai Petrov, an expert in regional politics at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow.
“These are the most blatant irregularities I have seen.”
About 30 million people were registered to vote on Sunday in mayoral, regional and district elections held in 76 of Russia’s 83 regions. It was the first nationwide series of polls since Mr Medvedev took the presidency in 2008 after receiving the endorsement of then-president Mr Putin.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that both politicians, who rule Russia in a so-called tandem, enjoy majority support, and both of them endorse United Russia. But political analysts were expecting the party to lose at least a portion of its seats in regional parliaments due to the backlash from the financial crisis, which is forecast to shrink the economy by 8.5 per cent this year.
Yet even in the most hotly contested vote, United Russia consolidated its control of Moscow’s city council by taking 90 per cent of the seats. Only three seats went to Russia’s second-most popular party, the Communists.
“The main danger from all of this is the complete alienation of the voter,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, head of Yabloko, the main pro-western party registered in Sunday’s elections. “If voters feel that their concerns cannot be expressed through the ballot box, they will seek other means of reacting to the political situation, and that could spell the start of major instability.”