By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow : The Russian foreign ministry has said that comments by senior White House officials about Russian parliamentary elections were “unacceptable”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that the Dec 4 polls in Russia were neither free nor fair.
“Russian voters deserve a full investigation of all credible reports of electoral fraud and manipulation and we hope in particular that the Russian authorities will take action,” Clinton told foreign ministers of member countries of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Later, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement: “Comments by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the Russian parliamentary elections, as well as those of other representatives of the White House and the US Department of State are unacceptable.”
“We expect the US side to refrain from unfriendly statements running counter to the general positive vector of our bilateral relations,” the statement read.
Russia is disappointed by the fact that Washington officials “stick to outdated stereotypes and labels without trying to understand what is really happening in our electoral field”, the ministry said.
The US election system can also hardly be considered “a paragon of openness and fairness”, the ministry said, pointing to a “very low voter turnover at US elections at all levels”.
“The US executive authorities should rather analyze the reasons for this situation and ways to improve it,” the statement said.
The United Russia party gained almost half of the vote in the polls. The vote was marred by widespread allegations of poll procedure in favour of the party, with dozens of clips uploaded on the internet appearing to show election fraud.
International observers from the Council of Europe and the OSCE noted that the election preparations were technically “well-administered across a vast territory”, but marked by “flagrant procedural violations”, including cases of ballot-stuffing, “a convergence of the state and the governing party”, limited political competition and a lack of fairness.
President Dmitry Medvedev declared the elections free and democratic but ordered an investigation into the alleged violations.