The other opposition party, PARNAS, led by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, also failed to pass the mark.
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Putin’s party won 54 percent of the vote with a historically low voter turnout – just 48 percent. Not that they need it: The three other parties elected on Sunday support the president as well. United Russia, by contrast, received about four times as many at the 95 percent stations.
The crushing victory of Russia’s ruling party has been welcomed as a vote for “stability” by President Vladimir Putin, but slammed as a catastrophe by the marginalised opposition.
However, she said that irregularities were not bad enough to justify nullifying any results. On election day, he admitted that “things are tough” economically, but the results were “good”. That worm becomes larger when it is considered that there has once again been credible evidence, including covert video footage, of election officials stuffing ballot boxes.
The election for lawmakers comes 18 months ahead of the next presidential election.
No genuine opposition candidate appeared to have made it into the Duma for its new five-year term. The single-member seats, however, did offer an opportunity to parties excluded by the 5% cutoff; last time it was run that way, in 2003, the liberal opposition forces were able to win a few seats and therefore maintain some genuinely critical voice in parliament.
“The easiest form of falsification in terms of cost and intellectual effort on the part of the falsifiers is simply to add votes in favor of the desired party or candidate”, Shpilkin explained.
According to Pozhalov, Yavlinsky, who founded Yabloko in 1993, gives the impression of a man of the past and can not win over a new electorate.
Russian President Vladimir Putin casts a ballot at a polling station during a parliamentary election in Moscow, Russia, on Sunday. There is no qualitative growth in party alignment: the same systemic opposition, the same leaders, but older and more exhausted, which does not inspire any hopes for the development of alternatives, therefore the opposition representation in this Duma will be weaker than the previous one. “Now this protest is gone, and A Just Russia’s electoral message was not very convincing this year”, Orlov told RBTH.
“There remains a trend to eliminate all possible limitations on the authorities in the country”, Pavlovsky told RBTH.
Alexander Pozhalov recalls the important role of the deputies who entered the Duma through single-seat constituencies.
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Sunday’s ballot for the 450-seat State Duma was smooth sailing for authorities desperate to avoid a repeat of mass protests last time round and eager to increase their dominance as Russian Federation faces the longest economic crisis of Putin’s rule. In my opinion, the current party-political spectrum doesn’t ideologically reflect the rather complex state of modern society, even its diverse majority, connected with the Crimean consensus. “The Duma may cease to be manageable when the economic situation changes and a real impoverishment of the regions begins”, he said.
