Observers criticize Russia vote

[The Minx]

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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared his party's controversial parliamentary victory a mandate to cement power.

But international electoral monitors and foreign governments have questioned the fairness of the vote, which will let him wield power beyond the end of his presidential term.

Putin's United Russia Party had 64.1 percent of the vote from nearly 98 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Central Election Commission -- enough to form a majority with 70 per cent of seats in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, party leader Boris Gryzlov said.

Putin was top of United Russia's list of candidates, guaranteeing him a parliamentary seat and allowing him to extend his influence when his presidential term ends in 2008, perhaps as prime minister.

"I headed United Russia ticket, and, of course, it's a sign of public trust," Putin said in televised comments, adding that victory would let the United Russia party cement its power base in the Duma.

He said that the election results showed "Russians won't allow the nation to take a destructive path, like what happened in some other nations in the ex-Soviet space"

But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) questioned the fairness of the polls.

"We can not say there were fair elections," said Luc van den Brande, head of the OSCE delegation, Monday.

Independent election monitors said their work had been hampered, and reports abound of state employees being ordered to support the government.

Van den Brande called the ballot a "managed election," saying the president's office had an "overwhelming influence." "It was not first and foremost an election of the state Duma members, but it was rather a referendum to the president," according to van den Brande.

Russian political rivals have also questioned the result.

Opposition leader Garry Kasparov, the chess grand master who was sentenced to five days in jail for leading an unsanctioned demonstration in November, said that "there are no illusions that what is being called elections was the most unfair and dirtiest in the whole history of modern Russia," in comments reported by AP Monday.

Several activists from his Other Russia party, which was disqualified by election officials, attempted to monitor the elections but had been arrested, he added.

"The campaign was completely dominated by all the authority that all belonged to United Russia," Kasparov said. "More or less, Russia now has moved to a soft version of one-party dictatorship."

And in Washington, the White House called on Russian authorities to investigate complaints of election irregularities. U.S. officials had expressed concern ahead of the vote about the intimidation of opposition figures and the effect of "state-owned or -influenced" media in favor of Putin's party, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

The UK's Foreign Office urged Russia to investigate all claims of electoral irregularities in a statement reported by The Associated Press, adding that such claims "if proven correct, would suggest that the Russian elections were neither free nor fair.

Kimmo Kiljunen, vice president of the Office of Security and Cooperation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, in comments reported by AP, said: "There was the strange situation that the executive branch almost chose the legislative branch. It is supposed to be the other way round."

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said his party planned to conduct a vote count of its own, adding that Communists would rally across the country for days in protest of what they believe is biased counting.

But Gryzlov said: "The election is vindication that Vladimir Putin is the country's national leader, and that the Russian voters support the political course he has taken in the last eight years."

And Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov dismissed the complaints, arguing that even "marginal" parties had been allowed to take part in the campaign.

"What we faced here was a free and democratic election campaign," Peskov told CNN. "And the fact that we now, according to preliminary results, are expecting a three- or four-party parliament shows that this was really a race. The unique characteristic of that race was the leadership of one party, the front-runner, United Russia."

Three other parties are expected to hold seats in the new Duma. As of Monday, the opposition Communist Party had received 11.7 percent of the vote; the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, 8.4 percent; and the pro-Putin Fair Russian Party 8 percent.

The remaining seven parties on the ballot, including several pro-Western liberal parties, failed to meet the 7 percent threshold for representation in the Duma.

Among those elected to the Duma were Andrei Lugovoi, chief suspect in the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in London last year.

The newly-elected Liberal Democratic Party of Russia lawmaker is now immune from legal proceedings in Russia -- the U.K. authorities had previously requested his extradition to London to face trial.

Putin, whom critics accuse of undermining political and media freedoms while president, has said he would consider taking the post of prime minister if his party were to win a landslide victory. He has already held that office, in 1999, before then-President Boris Yeltsin named the former KGB officer Russia's acting president.

He was elected to succeed Yeltsin in 2000 and won a second term in 2004.

During the campaign, Putin described his opponents as "foreign-fed jackals" and said Russia would not tolerate meddling from abroad.
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Far-right leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, said he was satisfied with the initial results. He expected his party's share of the vote to rise as high as 13 percent once all the votes are counted.

And the leader of the Fair Russian Party, Sergei Mironov, said his party was planning to issue a bill in parliament to extend the presidential term. But changing the length of the presidential term would require a change to Russia's constitution, something Gryzlov said United Russia would not support.