Russian election called unfair

Turnout was about 63 percent, up from 56 percent in the last parliamentary elections four years ago.

The Kremlin portrayed the election as a plebiscite on Putin’s nearly eight years as president. Putin is widely popular, in part because of Russia’s oil-fueled economic boom and his ambition to revive Russia’s status as a great power.

United Russia said it will name its presidential candidate at its congress set for Dec. 17 — most likely a figurehead who stands to be overshadowed by Putin.

Putin is constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term.

United Russia’s victory would give it 315 seats in Russia’s 450-seat State Duma, election officials said. The Communists would have just over 50 seats.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov called the election “the most irresponsible and dirty” in the post-Soviet era and party officials vowed to challenge the results.

Two other pro-Kremlin parties — the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and populist Just Russia — also made it into parliament.

Litvinenko suspect to be deputy
Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer and the chief suspect in the London poisoning death of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko last year, will serve as a deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party.

“Now Mr. Putin and Mr. Lugovoi stand together as the emblem of Russia — the two people linked by a murder,” Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, said in a statement. Litvinenko in a deathbed statement accused Putin of ordering his killing — which the Kremlin has denied.

No other parties passed the 7 percent threshold for gaining seats in the legislature. Both opposition liberal parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, were shut out.

Anatoly Chubais, head of Russia’s electricity monopoly and a leader of the Union of Right Forces, called the vote a “disgusting” repeat of Soviet practices.

“United Russia is becoming monopolist and restoring a Soviet spirit and Soviet mentality,” he said in a statement.

Many voters said they were pressured to cast ballots for United Russia, said Alexander Kynev, a political expert with the election monitoring group Golos. In Pestovo in the western Novgorod region, some said their they ballots already were filled out for United Russia, he said.

In Chechnya, where turnout was over 99 percent, witnesses reported seeing election authorities filling out and casting ballots.

European election monitors criticized changes in Russian election law that restricts voters to choosing only for a party, not candidates, and for making it more difficult for smaller parties to make it into parliament.

In previous elections, half the seats were chosen among candidates contesting a specific district, allowing a few mavericks to get in.

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