Democracy in action in Russia
Putin Party Heads for Triumph in Russia Poll
Updated 10:45 PM ET December 7, 2003
By Ron Popeski
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's allies headed for overwhelming electoral victory on Monday, crushing communist and liberal opponents in a parliamentary poll that could change the political landscape of Russia.
The Communist Party called Sunday's polls a farce and accused the Kremlin of fraud. Liberal party leaders, facing political oblivion, said the vote concentrated too much power in the hands of the pro-Kremlin United Russia and of nationalists.
"We will have an entirely different political picture in Russia," said Boris Nemtsov, whose pro-business Union of Right- Wing Forces (SPS) may scrape only a few seats in the Duma lower house.
He said ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Motherland (Rodina), a new party combining leftwing economics and nationalism, could deliver Putin the two-thirds vote needed for constitutional change. That could allow him, among other things, to extend his rule into a third term.
The vote suggested ex-KGB officer Putin, who has moved to restore central control since succeeding Boris Yeltsin in 2000, would easily win a second term at presidential polls in March.
"I think the influence of the two nationalist parties on policy will be limited. Putin will grow a powerful economy with strong state influence," Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital, said.
But many may fear that if partial results are borne out, Putin could fall under the sway of conservative state security and military 'hawks' in his administration, already seen as pushing the state to take more control of the economy.
The virtual disappearance of the two liberal parties, if confirmed by final results, would alarm economists who saw them as a motor of economic reform on Duma committees. A power shift could affect plans to tackle monopolies, administrative reform, healthcare reform and foreign investment legislation. "We will return wealth to the people," Dmitry Rogozin, co-leader of Motherland, told Ekho Moskvy radio station, in comments that will be heard with some concern by investors wary of any attempt to reverse the privatizations of the 1990s.
The poll took place under heavy security after a bomb on a train near Chechnya on Friday killed 42 people. Officials blame Chechen rebels, though the separatists have denied involvement.
Latest official results, after 67 per cent of votes had been counted, put United Russia at 36.5 percent. The Communists, popular with the old and poor were on only 12.9 percent, well down from the 24 percent they garnered in the 1999 election. Zhirinovsky's LDPR had 12.3 percent.
OLD FACES MAY VANISH
Motherland, a newcomer founded in what the communists said was a Kremlin ruse to draw off support from their ranks, were on 8.7 per cent and so assured of a strong Duma voice.
Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov complained, with some justification, that his campaign had been largely ignored by state-controlled media. Voting, he said, was rife with fraud.
"This is a shameful farce which has nothing in common with the country's interests or democracy."
A generation of political leaders who have dominated post-Soviet politics appeared in danger. Zyuganov, leader since the party was reconstituted in the 1990s after a ban, appears in a weak position.
Another evergreen, economist Grigory Yavlinsky, could be dispatched to the political wilderness if his Yabloko Party fails the five percent barrier required for representation.
Anatoly Chubais, motor of the Russian privatization denounced by communists and nationalists as corrupt, could meet the same fate if SPS falls short of the threshold.
Partial results saw SPS at 3.8 percent and Yabloko at 4.2.
Fears linger that the Kremlin is becoming more intrusive in the private sector since the arrest in October of Russia's richest man and former YUKOS oil company chief, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on fraud and tax evasion charges.
(Additional reporting by Maria Golovnina, Darya Korsunskaya, Richard Ayton, Ron Popeski)
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