By DPA
Moscow : Russian voters Sunday went to the parliamentary elections that are expected to deliver a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s party.
Accusations that Putin’s party United Russia enjoyed an unfair advantage were echoed by all 11 parties participating in the vote, which is seen as a referendum on his political course.
As polls closed in a wave across Russia’s 11 time zones, initial turnout among the nation’s 109 million registered voters was higher than 2003 amid an official drive to mobilize voters apathetic over the lack of issues and predictability of the results.
Putin’s party was projected to win 60 percent of the 450-seat parliament, with the Communist party bringing up the rear and other parties running as non-starters below the seven percent entry threshold.
“I voted Communist … life was good then, everything was free,” Galina, 82, a former doctor and communist party member, said leaving Moscow’s polling station No. 86.
“But I am ‘For Putin’,” she added, giving voice to slogans on United Russia billboards and flags cluttering the capital’s street. “Too bad, I can’t tick a second square too. We need a man who doesn’t compromise, I hope he stays.”
In a campaign plug for his party, Putin accused all other parties from Communist to the liberals were “puppets of Russia’s enemies” bent on weakening the state.
Russia’s beleaguered opposition said restrictions in election law, biased media coverage, and government badgering were responsible for narrowing the field from a four-party parliament to a probable two-party outcome: United Russia and the next best party which by law must be let in.
Putin, 55, who is barred from a third term in office, agreed to head United Russia’s party list in October. He says a big win for his party would hand him a “moral” mandate for ensuring “continuity” after the March presidential vote.
Russia’s full-throttle, oil-fuelled economic growth has boosted Putin’s popularity over his eight-year presidency, and voting Sunday Putin said he was in a “festive” mood.
“Thank God, the election race is over. I am sure that voters have made their minds about preferences,” Putin said after casting his ballot in Moscow.
On the eve of the election, Putin warned the nation that if they did not vote for his party the country could backslide into the “humiliation, dependence and decay” of the 1990s when liberals wasted its wealth and oligarchs robbed it.
The head of the communist party Gennady Zyuganov said these were “the dirtiest and most irresponsible elections” since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Under former president Boris Yeltsin “there were two ways to get votes – intimidation and fixing results – now they have thought up at least 15 ways to swindle and capture votes,” he said after voting.
Western-celebrated opposition leader and chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was jailed for five days before the elections and forbidden to see his lawyer, spoiled his ballot by adding the name of his opposition coalition The Other Russia.
The Other Russia, which Putin has likened to foreign-funded “jackals,” was banned by new election laws from registering as party and authorities’ crackdowns on their protest marches have repeatedly drawn Western fire.
The election-monitoring body arm of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was not monitoring Sunday’s vote.
Only 299 foreign election-observers, 180 of them from post-Soviet states, will judge the fairness of the vote across Russia’s 96,000 polling stations.
Putin accused the US of standing behind the OSCE’s decision with the aim of tarnishing Russia’s vote.
Russian watchdogs reported Sunday that the authorities were pressuring public sector employees to get out the vote.
The independent monitoring body Golos, or “voice,” which receives EU and US funding, said over 1,000 voting irregularities had been called into its hotline.
Analysts say that anything less than 70 percent win for United Russia would be seen by the Kremlin as an insult to the president’s soaring popularity ratings.
The president’s push to consolidate power Soviet-style into one party has observers guessing whether he means to become prime minister and back a weak president to succeed him.