Russia, October 12: Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party has tightened its grip on Russian politics by winning a sweeping victory in local elections, but the opposition alleged widespread fraud.
The United Russia party won nearly 80 per cent of the open seats in local and regional legislative polls held Sunday in 75 regions of the country, Leonid Ivlev, a member of the central elections commission, told journalists.
The party won 107 out of 135 seats in regional legislatures and 189 out of 235 seats in municipal legislatures, Ivlev said, quoted by news agencies.
“Today the party has proved that it has not only the moral, but the legal right to form executive power in the regions,” President Dmitry Medvedev said in a televised meeting with United Russia leaders.
Mr Medvedev called the elections “convincing” even as opposition parties and independent monitors slammed them as unfair.
“The violations of the electoral process… do not allow us to conclude that the elections met Russian and international standards for fair, free and competitive elections,” independent monitoring agency Golos said.
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In the closely watched vote for the Moscow city legislature, United Russia and the main opposition Communist Party were the only parties to win seats, while the liberal Yabloko party was squeezed out.
With 99 per cent of ballots counted, United Russia had 66 per cent of the vote in the Moscow election while the Communist Party came in a distant second with 13 per cent, the central elections commission said.
Yabloko and other parties failed to pass the seven-per cent barrier needed to win seats, the commission said.
Moscow is seen as a bastion of liberal voters and its city legislature had been one of the few toeholds that liberal parties still held on power, with Yabloko holding two seats, which it has now lost.
Yabloko said it had received a “storm of calls” from Moscow voters saying they were unable to vote at polling stations because someone else had already voted in their name.
–Agencies