“We can confidently say that the party has achieved a very good result”, Putin said during a visit to United’s headquarters after the vote. The results show that the Russian President has a firm grip on power in the country. The European Union and the virulently anti-Russian, pro-US government in Ukraine are refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Russian parliamentary vote in Crimea.
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According to preliminary estimates, the ruling United Russia party has won the September 18 parliamentary elections by a landslide margin, receiving 54.23 percent of the vote, which gave it at least two thirds of the seats and a constitutional majority in the State Duma.
These numbers suggest “an impressive vote of confidence” for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman told reporters.
These result are based on 93 percent of all cast ballots. However, it more than retained its majority, by winning a record 343 seats in the 450-seat lower house.
The Communists and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party won 13.36 percent and 13.18 percent respectively, while A Just Russia received 6.2 percent.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party has suffered an electoral blow in Berlin state elections, two weeks after her Christian Democrats (CDU) party came third in an eastern state amid a growing backlash against her immigration policy. In contrast to the two previous elections, only half the seats in this election were chosen by national party list; the others were contested by single-seat districts. Unfortunately our liberal opposition has discredited itself a little.
United Russia, led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a loyalist of President Putin, now has 238 of 450 Duma seats and dominates the more than 80 regional parliaments. Because I do not believe them. There was other evidence of voter apathy across Russia’s 11 time zones, from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea.
The perceived fairness of the election could be a critical factor in whether protests arise following the voting. The deputy head of the Russian Central Elections Committee said that the elections watchdog would look into all the reports, adding at the same time that majority either have no basis in reality, or are “exaggerated”. The observers also noted “self-censorship encouraged by the restrictive legal and regulatory framework”.
“It is clear that the election were not free and fair, that’s what we were saying in the beginning when we started the election campaign”. The results have yet to be verified by Russia’s Central Election Commission. A video posted on YouTube appeared to show a poll worker in the southern Rostov region dropping multiple sheets of paper into a ballot box.
“CEC chair Ella Pamfilova said that the measures in response to all the violations would be taken”.
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After the last election in 2011, anger at ballot-rigging prompted large protests in Moscow, and the Kremlin will be anxious to avoid a repetition of such unrest.
