Translated material
Results with Churov
Any elections in Russia are won by the authorities
The preliminary results of the presidential elections were announced yesterday morning by the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, after 99.73% of the protocols of the election commissions were entered into the GAS “Elections” system. The final figures differed somewhat from the first data for Siberia and the Far East, announced on the post-election night.As the country moved west, turnout increased from 64 to 69.6%, thus exceeding any expression of will at the federal level over the past four years. Along with the turnout, the result of the election winner Dmitry Medvedev also increased by 5-6%, reaching 70.2%. This figure is little different from the almost 72% received by incumbent President Vladimir Putin in March 2004. Such an exceptionally fortunate coincidence for the authorities nips in the bud any attempts to speculate about which of the two heads of state is more legitimate and more loved by the people.
Putin's successor consistently received more than 60% of the vote in all regions of the federation, although residents of a number of regions loved Mr. Medvedev especially ardently. We are talking about voters in Ingushetia and Dagestan, where the favorite received 91% of the vote with an almost universal turnout. A similar picture is observed in Mordovia and Karachay-Cherkessia (90% each), Tuva (89%), Chechnya, Bashkiria, Kabardino-Balkaria (88% each) and Tatarstan (79%). And only irresponsible citizens of the Smolensk region did not give the favorite votes: in this region he received only 59%. By the way, on December 2, at the Duma elections in the Smolensk region, United Russia also showed one of the worst results in the country - 53%, after which the then head of the region, Viktor Maslov, moved from the governor’s chair to the Federation Council. On the interactive maps installed yesterday at the Central Election Commission, this area stood out as a white spot on a flat blue background - this color marked the areas where Mr. Medvedev scored more than 60%.
But the result of the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov on the way to the west decreased slightly: if the night before he threatened to exceed 20%, by the morning he was fixed at around 17.75%. At the same time, in a number of regions Comrade Zyuganov performed much more successfully: the remnants of the so-called “red belt” are making themselves felt. The main communist in the Bryansk region collected 27% of the votes, 26% in the Orenburg region, 24% in the Volgograd, Smolensk, and Ryazan regions.
The leader of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also lost ground by morning, dropping from 12 to 9.36%. It reached its ceiling in the Nenets (17%) and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrugs (almost 16%) and the Kemerovo Region (15%).
But the greatest success was achieved by self-nominated candidate Andrei Bogdanov, who won the love of 1.3% of Russians. This is exactly ten times more than the result of the Democratic Party led by Mr. Bogdanov in the parliamentary elections on December 2. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, this small record corresponds to 962 thousand votes, which is more than two times less than the number of signatures in his support provided by candidate Bogdanov to the Central Election Commission during registration. According to official data, his headquarters then managed to collect 2 million honest autographs.
Sunday's voting caused conflicting assessments from experts. Thus, the head of the PACE observer mission, Andreas Gross, yesterday officially announced a statement in which skeptical notes are clearly heard, although the voting results are not in doubt. “The elections completely repeated the shortcomings of the State Duma elections - none of the concerns regarding the registration of observers were taken into account,” he said, “which calls into question the extent to which these elections are free. There has been no overall improvement in terms of equal access of candidates to the media, to the public, which calls into question the fairness of the elections.” At the same time, Mr. Gross said, “in an election that was more of a plebiscite over the last eight years of the country’s life, the people of Russia voted for the stability and continuity that is associated with the current president.” As the head of the PACE observer mission noted, “the elected president will have a solid mandate from the majority of Russians.”
CEC member Igor Borisov, in a conversation with reporters yesterday, called Mr. Gross’s statement “softer and smoother” compared to previously expressed assessments, but even in this form, the conclusion of the PACE mission was received with hostility by the Central Election Commission. “I do not know the document that defines the procedure for using the democratic potential,” Mr. Churov sarcastically ridiculed certain European formulations yesterday. And regarding the demand to increase the transparency of the vote counting procedure, the head of the Central Election Commission spoke in the Putin spirit: “Should I force the commission members to work naked for greater transparency?”
But the head of the Central Election Commission, as usual, was pleased with the assessments of observers from the CIS countries, the CIS Parliamentary Assembly and the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. They all recognized the elections as “free, open and transparent.” True, the head of the headquarters of the CIS observer mission, Oleg Kuleba (Belarus), in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, admitted that 120 mission employees in 37 regions worked only on voting day and could not record earlier violations or coercion to participate in the elections. However, there were some comments. Thus, the head of the mission of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, Ural Mukhamedzhanov, proposed “to issue a law banning the removal of ballots from the voting premises, both filled and empty.” The initiative is relevant, because taking a ballot home is now a form of protest behavior among those Russians who, after the abolition of the turnout threshold and the “Against all” column, cannot fully express their attitude towards the domestic electoral system.
The previous night, even within the walls of the Central Election Commission itself, some figures boasted to a Vremya Novostei correspondent about the ballots taken from the polling station. Mr. Mukhamedzhanov, however, suggests classifying this as a “hooligan act.” It is unknown whether the Russian authorities will support this initiative, but even before the elections the Central Election Commission stated that the electoral legislation would soon be amended once again.
Against the backdrop of the presidential elections, the results of the elections to regional legislative assemblies, which took place on Sunday in 11 subjects of the federation, have expectedly faded. There were no surprises: United Russia won everywhere, both on party lists and in single-mandate constituencies. This victory looked most convincing in Bashkiria (almost 86%), Ingushetia (74%), Rostov (71%), Ulyanovsk (66%) regions. The party in power exceeded 60% in the Ivanovo and Amur regions; its result was lower in the Sverdlovsk (58.4%) region, Kalmykia (54%), Altai Territory (53%) and Yakutia (51.8%). And in the Yaroslavl region, where a few days before the vote the court deregistered A Just Russia, United Russia managed to get only 49%.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation performed best in Kalmykia (22.6%), Altai Territory (19.6%), Yakutia, Rostov, Ulyanovsk and Ivanovo regions (almost 16%). Only four parties represented in the State Duma entered the legislative assemblies of Ingushetia, Altai Territory, Ulyanovsk and Ivanovo regions. The parliament in Yakutia will also be four-party, but there the LDPR was replaced by the Agrarian Party, and in the Yaroslavl region, instead of the removed “Socialist Revolutionaries,” the “Patriots of Russia” won mandates. The legislative assemblies of the Sverdlovsk and Amur regions (United Russia, Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Liberal Democratic Party), as well as Kalmykia (bears, communists and agrarians) will be three-party. Finally, only communists will keep United Russia company in Bashkiria and the Rostov region. These two parties thus received mandates in all 11 regions, while the Zhirinovites succeeded in only seven federal subjects, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in five. All this only confirms that in the existing political conditions only large federal parties can be allowed to participate in regional politics, as the Vremya Novostey newspaper wrote about in its issue of February 29.
The incident with the passage of the “Patriots of Russia” into the Yaroslavl Regional Duma should probably be attributed to the low entry barrier (5%) and the scandal with the removal of the “Socialist Revolutionaries”. The confident victory of the farmers in Yakutia was also very interesting. There, with generally low results, voters of three territorial commissions unexpectedly gave the APR more than 30% of the votes, which influenced the outcome of the vote. Similarly, in Kalmykia as a whole, with a small average percentage, farmers in some places received 10-11%, and in one commission even 17%. But these exceptions only confirm the general rule.