By RIA Novosti
Moscow : Russia’s top election official Monday said the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections would be announced Dec 7-8, even as preliminary results showed President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has gained an absolute majority.
Vladimir Churov, chief of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said that 98 percent of votes had been counted so far with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party polling 64.1 percent.
The Communist Party received 11.6 percent of votes, while the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and the loyalist A Just Russia have got 8.2 percent and 7.8 percent respectively.
These are the only four parties which have overcome the statutory seven percent threshold mark to take seats in the fifth State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, Churov said.
Voters’ turnout has been estimated at 63 percent, he added.
Kimmo Kiljunen, vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said the voting had been fair and democratic.
In an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio, Kiljunen said there were no major violations of election rules in the polling. All the polling stations had been monitored, he added.
However, the OSCE official said he was extremely surprised at reports that some 99 percent of the electorate had voted for United Russia in Chechnya, Russia’s troubled North Caucasus republic. This in his experience was “impossible”, he added.