The ruling United Russia party, founded by Putin nearly 16 years ago after he first became president, was on track to win 343 seats or 76 percent of 450 available seats in Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, the Central Election Commission said, after 93 percent of ballots had been counted. In the previous election, voter turnout was artificially high and Moscow Times reports that 5.7 million votes for United Russia were actually fake.
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Ukrainian MPs have supported a statement by the Verkhovna Rada on Ukraine’s non-recognizing the legitimacy of elections to Russia’s State Duma of the seventh convocation, their results and legal consequences, and thus, the composition, authority, acts and decisions of the State Duma.
President Vladimir Putin leveraged his popularity to assert even greater control over Russia’s already malleable Parliament in national elections, with almost complete results released Monday showing the ruling United Russia party gaining an absolute majority of seats.
Putin said the result was good for his party, but it only represented a token on confidence that the party had yet to justify.
“Opposition parties can only succeed in Russian Federation when the turnout is high”.
“I hope very much that the government and the new parliament will act in consolidated fashion, combine their efforts and work towards the goals I just mentioned, above all in the interests of Russia’s people”, he said.
That is up from 238 seats in the last parliamentary election, in 2011, and would allow United Russia to change the constitution, although Putin can run again under the existing one as he was prime minister between his second and third terms. This victory would extend Vladimir Putin’s 17 years in power. No party presented a strong economic program to counter the current recession, he said, so in the end, those who voted chose the status quo.
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Numerous violations were reported during the election day. Nonetheless the independent Golos monitoring group said the vote was irrevocably tilted in favour of pro-Kremlin parties and was “far from what can truly be called free and fair”. 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. The Communists will have 42 seats in the new Duma, a sharp drop from 92, the nationalist Liberal Democrats 39 and A Just Russia 23. A gain of 105 seats means United Russia has inflicted heavy losses on its opponents.
