Russian Vote Criticized

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. (Reuters)

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DECEMBER 5, 2011
By ALAN CULLISON
The Wall Street Journal

MOSCOW—Western election monitors said Monday that a Russian parliamentary vote this weekend was neither free nor fair, and tipped lopsidedly in favor of the pro-Kremlin party that nevertheless was dealt a humiliating setback.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe denounced the voting irregularities in unusually harsh terms, saying that although election day was itself peaceful, it was marred by apparent manipulations and "serious indications of ballot box stuffing."

"To me, this election was like a game in which only some players are allowed to compete," said mission head Heidi Tagliavini at a news conference. "And the game was tilted in favor of one of the players."

Kremlin leaders were claiming a victory one day after the vote, although the pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, will lose a large number of seats in parliament, and is barely clinging to a majority.

The official tally showed United Russia was leading with 49.5% of the vote, with about 96% of precincts counted, according to Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov. He said United Russia it will get 238 of the Duma's 450 seats, a sharp drop compared to the previous vote that granted it a two-thirds majority in the State Duma, allowing it to change the constitution.

The results mark the largest electoral upset for Mr. Putin since his rise to power more than a decade ago, and highlight the fragility of the system of government that he has built since then under the name of "sovereign democracy." While the results don't threaten Mr. Putin's immediate grip on power, they could fuel rising tensions with the West. In the run-up to the vote, Mr. Putin had ramped up anti-Western rhetoric, accusing foreign-funded groups of attempting to destabilize the government.

Western criticism of the vote is likely to raise the Kremlin's apprehensions, because Mr. Putin plans to return to the presidency after another poll in March. "Any doubts about the legitimacy of these elections cast a shadow on the upcoming presidential elections," said Nikolai Zlobin, director of Russian and Asian programs at the World Security Institute in Washington, D.C. "Its very important to make sure that the population sees these results as legitimate."

In Moscow, security remained tight one day after the vote, with heavy police trucks parked along a main thoroughfare. Thousands of pro-Kremlin youth were bussed into the city center for a rally that leaders said was meant to neutralize antigovernment demonstrations. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told supporters Monday that the pro-Kremlin party's poor showing was evidence that the elections were fair. "United Russia received exactly what it has, not more and not less, and in that sense these were honest, fair and democratic elections," he said, according to the Interfax news agency. France on Monday urged Moscow to investigate the election violations cited by the OSCE, saying "all light must be shed on allegations in the report." Romain Nadal, deputy spokesman for the French foreign ministry said "we hope that lessons will be learned for the next elections organized in Russia."

Russian voters seem increasingly impatient with the Kremlin's stifling dominance of politics amid slowing economic growth and deepening inequality, analysts said. Lately the public discontent has spread to Mr. Putin, who has for the past two weeks avoided unscripted appearances after he was booed by the audience of a martial-arts competition in Moscow.

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said the vote spelled the beginning of the end of Mr. Putin's star-like popularity with Russians, and that his government will soon collapse. "He needs to hold an honest presidential election and allow opposition candidates to register for the race, if he doesn't want to be booed from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad,'' Mr. Nemtsov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

While Kremlin leaders sounded reassurances that United Russia remained in a leadership position, loss in parliament was clearly a worry to a Kremlin apparatus that has kept a tight hold on the media, but has been unable to control popular grumbling on the Internet.

In a sign of the Kremlin's concern, departing President Dmitry Medvedev, who led the United Russia party, said the results could force the pro-Kremlin bloc into coalition-building with opposition parties to pass legislation. Such a result would mark a reversal for United Russia, which has in recent years been able to pass any legislation the Kremlin wanted without compromising with the sidelined opposition.

Opposition parties, stunted over the years by the dominance of United Russia, were beneficiaries of Sunday's vote. The Communist Party won a bit more than 19% of early returns, followed by Just Russia, a left-wing party founded with Kremlin help with about 13%. The nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, whose erratic head, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has historically garnered protest votes, won just under 12%.

Westward-leaning liberals remain locked out of popular politics, and the sole liberal party allowed to run in elections Sunday didn't reach the 7% barrier to enter parliament.

But while the Kremlin will have a harder time steering Russia's parliament, vast powers still reside in Russia's presidency, a post Mr. Putin will occupy for another six years if he prevails in March elections.

Although final results appear to give United Russia a majority in parliament, Kremlin leaders appeared to be positioning themselves for a setback.

Mr. Medvedev, interviewed on Russian state television at United Russia headquarters, called the results "democracy in action," causing smiles in the room. Mr. Medvedev said that with a "more complex configuration" in parliament it may be necessary to resort to "coalition, bloc relations."

Mr. Putin, looking stern, said the results "reflect the real situation in the country. For United Russia, it's the optimal result." But he maintained that United Russia still kept its "leadership position."

State TV, usually carefully scripted in its coverage of politics, offered a surprising diversity of opinions in live reports Sunday night as news of the poor showing rolled in. Some commentators in the studio described the results as "catastrophic" for the ruling party, while others said the unexpectedly strong results for opposition parties were a sign of much-needed diversity in Russian politics.

Opposition parties and independent observers reported widespread voting abuses, though government officials said the election went smoothly. Nearly all the vote-rigging reported Sunday favored the United Russia party. Exit polls indicated that United Russia would get 46% to 48%, but as results trickled in the official tally climbed toward 50%.

The election came after what Kremlin critics called unprecedented pressure on vote monitors who were amassing evidence of voting irregularities. Websites of independent vote monitors and news websites fell under simultaneous hacker attacks before the start of voting, and remained out of commission on Monday.

The websites, belonging to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and Novaya Gazeta, had published numerous stories on vote -fraud allegations. The U.S.-financed vote-monitoring group Golos, which fell under hacker attacks before polls opened, had been singled out by state-run media as a tool of foreign governments.

At Golos, email accounts were swamped by thousands of spam messages, and telephones of employees were also rendered useless by a torrent of automatic calls. Phone calls to the monitoring group were also somehow diverted to an unknown number, where an operator told callers to phone elsewhere, said Golos director Liliya Shibanova.

The spam attack disabled a Golos project that has drawn special Kremlin ire in the past week—an interactive map displaying reported campaign violations across the country ahead of the vote. The map allowed voters to click on the map to learn about and report violations in their own regions. As of Saturday the map had contained more than 5,500 complaints.

Other Kremlin critics simply boycotted the election, or encouraged voters to deface their ballots because restrictions on opposition parties made any real choice impossible.