RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin's party has scored a landslide win in Russia's election

President Vladimir Putin's party has scored a landslide win in Russia's election, but the opposition has vowed to challenge an outcome. President Vladimir Putin's party scored a landslide win in Russia's election, results showed on Monday (December 3), but the opposition vowed to challenge an outcome that could help Putin keep a grip on power after he leaves office. In the first foreign reaction, the White House urged Russia to investigate opposition claims of widespread ballot-rigging in the vote which, according to incomplete official results, gave Putin's United Russia party more than 60 percent of the vote. The Kremlin hailed the result as a signal from Russian voters that they want Putin -- required by the constitution to step down when his second termnext year -- to retain influence even after he leaves office. But the Communists, likely to be the only opposition force in parliament, said they would challenge the result in the Supreme Court. They said they would meet later on Monday to decide whether to boycott the new parliament. With 79.4 percent of votes counted, United Russia had 63.3 percent of the vote and the Communists 11.7 percent. Only two other parties -- Fair Russia and LDPR which both back the Kremlin -- cleared the 7-percent hurdle to qualify for seats. The 55-year-old Putin, a former KGB spy who is hugely popular and credited by voters with restoring Russia's national pride, has been tipped for a role as prime minister or possibly speaker of parliament after his presidency. Some observers say he could seek a third term as president, though he has said repeatedly he would not change the constitution to pave the way for this. Allegations of ballot fraud are unlikely to strike a chord with the majority of Russians who, opinion polls show, respect Putin and want him to stay on as a "national leader". The opposition parties most critical of Putin have marginal support. "It is nice to see that more than half of the population has listened to the president and voted for him. I hope United Russia will do its best to carry out the policy of the president," said Yuri, a student in Moscow. But the allegations could drive a new wedge between an increasingly assertive Moscow and the West which Putin accused last week of "poking their snotty noses" in Russia's affairs. One of the key international vote monitors at the election, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly, said the strong influence of Russia's executive branch was a "problem". "As I said, there is actually a problem in the basics where the executive branch has so strong a role in party politics. That is obviously not normal and it has an influence on the results, and we should be noting that," Kimmo Kiljunen, vice president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, told Reuters. Europe's main ODIHR election watchdog -- seen in the West as a key yardstick of the fairness of an election -- pulled out of the vote citing obstruction by the Russian authorities. The head of Russia's Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, a former colleague of Putin who was appointed election chief this year, has dismissed allegations of fraud. Russians credit Putin with overseeing an oil-fuelled economic boom and like his no-nonsense approach, even while many in the West see it as squashing democratic freedoms. But independent election monitors and opposition parties said officials mounted a nationwide campaign of bribery, intimidation and ballot-stuffing to make sure the vote handed Putin a resounding mandate. The allegations included voters being offered the chance to win televisions and refrigerators if they backed Putin, and a report people were being bussed around the city of St Petersburg and voting in one polling station after another.

ITN Source | December 3, 2007

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