Vote To Decide Scale of Putin’s Domination

MOSCOW — Russians voted today in a parliamentary election where the only question was whether President Putin’s party would win a strong majority of seats or a crushing share.The election follows months of increasingly acidic rhetoric aimed against the West and efforts, by law and by truncheon, to stifle opponents.A huge win for Mr. Putin’s United Russia party could pave the way for him to stay at the country’s helm once his presidential term expires in the spring. The party casts the election as essentially a referendum on Mr. Putin’s nearly eight years in office. Many of its campaign banners that festoon the capital read “Moscow is voting for Putin.”“He’s a good man. Any woman would love to see him in her house,” Polina Amanyeva, 58, said at a Moscow polling station where she said she voted for United Russia.Mr. Putin is constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term as president in March. But he clearly wants to keep his hand on Russia’s levers of power, and has raised the prospect of becoming prime minister; many supporters have suggested his becoming a “national leader,” though what duties and powers that would entail are unclear.He has said that a strong showing for the party today would give him the moral right to ensure that politicians in power continue his policies. Recent opinion polls suggest the party could win up to 80% of seats.“I’m sure that voters have determined their preferences and now only have to come and vote for the party whose platform seems convincing, vote for those people in whom you trust,” Mr. Putin told reporters after casting his ballot at the Russian Academy of Sciences.The dominance of United Russia provoked a fatalistic attitude in some voters.“I think the result was pretty much planned in advance. I don’t know who I’ll vote for; I’ll decide when I get to the booth,” Ivan Kudrashov said as he entered Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral for Sunday Mass.Alexander Mikhailov, 39, said outside a polling station in Moscow that he wanted to vote for a “truly democratic party” and chose the liberal opposition Yabloko because “there is no other choice.”In Moscow, about 15 gay-rights activists were detained at a polling station after a protest in which they scrawled “No to homophobia” on their ballots.The vote is the first national ballot under new election laws that have been widely criticized as marginalizing opposition forces. All the seats will be awarded proportionately to how much of the vote a party receives; in previous elections, half the seats were distributed among candidates contesting a specific district, which allowed a few mavericks to get in.The new laws also say a party must receive at least 7% of the national vote to get any seats — up from the previous 5%. A poll by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center in mid-November showed the Communists and two other parties hovering near the cutoff point.Opposition parties, meanwhile, claim authorities have confiscated campaign materials and that the managers of halls have refused to rent them out for opposition meetings. Police have violently broken up opposition rallies — most recently in Moscow and St. Petersburg last weekend — and national television gives the parties hardly any coverage.In contrast, Mr. Putin’s speeches to supporters have been broadcast in full and repeated throughout evening newscasts.“The fact is, they’re not just rigging the vote. They’re raping the democratic system,” a chess champion and opposition leader, Garry Kasparov, said today.Mr. Kasparov, who was jailed for five days after the Moscow protest, spoiled his ballot by writing on it “Other Russia,” the name of his opposition umbrella group.Today’s vote “meets none of the criteria of a free, fair, and democratic election. In effect, it is not even an election,” a former adviser to Mr. Putin, Andrei Illarionov, wrote in a commentary for the Cato Institute think tank.Under Mr. Putin, Russia has become inundated with oil revenue, a nascent middle class is developing, and the war against separatists in Chechnya has faded into sporadic, small clashes. Russia’s newly assertive military policy and inclination to taunt and criticize the West appeals strongly to Russians who suffered physically and emotionally in the early post-Soviet years.Disdain for the West has been one of the dominating themes of the election. Mr. Putin has called his opponents “foreign-fed jackals” and warned that Russia will not tolerate meddling from abroad.All those factors contribute to strong support for United Russia. But with the competition stifled and the election result seen as a foregone conclusion, some of the 107 million eligible to vote could find apathy, inertia, or simply the winter weather keeping them away from the ballot box.

Vote To Decide Scale of Putin’s Domination

Vote To Decide Scale of Putin’s Domination

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