MOSCOW – Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s ruling party suffered sharp falls in its vote in regional elections amid discontent at Russia’s worst economic crisis in a decade, results released yesterday showed.
United Russia still won all eight regions comfortably. But its share of the vote fell in seven of them by between 6 and 25 percentage points, compared with the 2007 national parliamentary election. In the Siberian city of Irkutsk, it lost control of the mayor’s office to the Communists.
Support for Mr Putin’s party has been sapped by the crisis, which has driven unemployment over 9 per cent after a decade-long boom. Last year gross domestic product fell by about 8 per cent, Russia’s worst performance since 1994.
The party spent much of its campaign trying to deflect anger over rapid hikes in prices charged by state-run firms for communal services, which have helped spark a series of large opposition protests.
“United Russia’s popularity is clearly falling due to the crisis, but the situation is not yet critical,” said Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the US-funded Carnegie Moscow Centre.
About 32 million of Russia’s 110 million electorate were eligible to vote in the balloting for eight of 83 regional parliaments, five city mayors and dozens of town councils. Turnout was just under 43 per cent.
United Russia did worst in the Sverdlovsk region, where its vote fell by about 25 points to just under 40 per cent. It fared best in Voronezh, where its vote rose 14 points to 62 per cent.
United Russia’s control of parliaments and administrations throughout Russia makes it a strong support base for Mr Putin, who steered Dmitry Medvedev into the presidency in 2008 but has not ruled out a return to the Kremlin in 2012.
Analysts say the party’s dominance will not be threatened unless Russia suffers more severe, sustained economic troubles.
Mr Putin himself is far more popular than the party, and sometimes uses it as a lightning rod for public discontent.
Meanwhile, monitors and opposition parties reported widespread election violations. They said Mr Medvedev had failed in almost two years as president to fulfil a pledge to loosen the Kremlin’s grip on the political system.
Russia’s top independent vote watchdog, Golos, said abuses such as ballot-stuffing, impersonation and biased access to media were rife in local elections held across Russia last October, and nothing had changed since then.
“We haven’t seen any positive signs. Violations are at the same level as October,” said Golos head Liliya Shibanova.
Authorities ensured blanket coverage for United Russia in state-run media during the campaign and blocked rivals such as the pro-western Yabloko party from taking part.
Monitors were given slightly better access to the vote count this time, but the level of violations reported was the same as in October. Those transgressions prompted a rare protest in the form of a parliamentary walkout by the three opposition parties whose activities are tolerated by the Kremlin: the Communists, nationalist Liberal Democrats and Fair Russia.
All three increased their share of the vote on Sunday and all were more cautious in their criticism.
“There were clearly violations, but nothing that would change the overall picture,” Nikolai Levichev, a senior Fair Russia official, told state TV channel Rossiya-24.
Federal election officials have dismissed complaints of bias, and say they received almost 50 per cent fewer complaints than during the last round of the regional elections in October.
Opposition Solidarity politician Ilya Yashin accused the authorities of concealing their true losses.
“We have returned to the Soviet system of the late 1980s when the party of power wins elections irrespective of its support, and disaffection grows regardless,” he said. – (Reuters)