By DPA
Moscow : The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monday criticized the Kremlin’s influence on campaigning following parliamentary elections in Russia over the weekend.
“The government and party structures were mixed up. This is a problematic aspect,” the vice-president of the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly, Kimmo Kiljunen, told radio Ekho Moskvy.
According to foreign observers, it was “highly problematic that both the president and the governors were running as party candidates,” Kimmo Kiljunen said, adding this went against the principle of party lists.
The United Russia party headed by Vladimir Putin won a two-thirds majority in Sunday’s elections.
In future, the government should not be allowed “to play such a large role in party politics,” the observer said.
A verdict on the polls by international election observers was still expected to follow.
Russia had markedly reduced the number of election observers in comparison to the 2003 elections.
Experts of the Warsaw-based OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights had called off their attendance at the elections after visa disputes.
Russian human rights activists, government critics and the opposition criticized many breaches of the law in the aftermath of the elections.
The United Russia as well as the country’s Central Election Commission, however, dismissed the objections as “negligible.”