Moscow(DPA) : Campaigning in Russia’s parliamentary elections officially closed Friday with the Kremlin using all means to exhort people to cast votes in the Dec 2 polls.
President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia is set to sweep an overwhelming victory, but it is the opinion polls that worry the Kremlin.
Voter apathy in the Putin camp is widespread because his victory looks assured.
In a campaign advertisement Thursday, Putin warned voters, “Please don’t think that everything is predetermined and will be preserved automatically… go to the polls on Dec 2 and vote for United Russia.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin mobilized state companies and Russian businesses Friday to prod Russia’s lazy voters with canvassing, SMS messages, metro tickets and phone coupons in a massive, last leg offensive before Dec 2.
Russia’s beleaguered opposition parties have accused Putin of agitating in violation of Russian election law. With the media and state resources at United Russia’s disposal, the scales are unfairly tipped, they said.
The Kremlin denies the accusations and promises the elections will be fair.
Putin met with leading academics Friday and in campaign mode promised higher wages, disappointing predictions that his earlier pre-recorded statement would resolve the question of what role he might assume when his term runs out in March.
Putin, who is barred from a third consecutive term, has stated only that a strong showing in the parliamentary elections would give him the “moral right” to continue to influence the nation’s political course.
Russian business newspaper Kommersant reported Friday that two of Russia’s biggest telecom operators were asked by the presidential administration to send SMS messages urging people to vote.
“This proves even more clearly that the parliamentary elections are turning into a referendum on Putin,” the newspaper’s front page read.
As such, analysts predict that Putin wants as high a vote for United Russia as his own popularity rating, which has grown to over 70 percent during his eight year presidency.
Putin adjured viewers of Russia’s Channel One during the five-minute break in its news bulletin that it was a “dangerous illusion” not to realize enemies were seeking to “restore the days of humiliation, dependence and decay” by nudging their foot in the door of the State Duma (parliament).
In Russia’s fifth parliamentary vote, the scrapping of single-mandate Duma candidates and new restrictions on registration passed by the United Russia majority in the outgoing Duma have narrowed the playing field.
A ban on publishing public opinion polls went into effect Monday, but polls had shown United Russia with 60 to 70 per cent of the vote.
The next best party, the Communists, will also join the new government.
But pro-Kremlin party A Just Russia and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party may not pass the seven per cent threshold needed to stay in government.
Garry Kasparov’s opposition coalition The Other Russia, which is not an official party and is not registered for the vote, took to the streets in so-called Dissenters’ Marches on Sunday held in central Moscow and St Petersburg.
On Thursday after five days imprisonment for his role in the marches, Kasparov pledged to continue fighting against Putin’s “dictatorship.”