Putin wins fourth term as president
Reports of ballot stuffing, forced voting
• Early results and an exit poll showed that Vladimir Putin handily won a fourth term as Russia’s president Sunday, adding six years in the Kremlin for the man who has led the world’s largest country for all of the 21st century.
The vote was tainted by widespread reports of ballotbox stuffing and forced voting, but the complaints will likely do little to undermine Putin. The Russian leader’s popularity remains high despite his suppression of dissent and reproach from the West over Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance in world affairs and alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Putin’s main challenge in the vote was to obtain a huge margin of victory in order to claim an indisputable mandate. The Central Election Commission said Putin had won about 72 per cent of the vote, based on a count of 22 per cent of the country’s precincts.
Russian authorities had sought to ensure a large turnout to bolster the image that Putin’s so-called “managed democracy” is robust and offers Russians true choices. By 5 p.m. Moscow time, authorities said turnout had hit nearly 52 per cent.
Put had faced seven minor candidates on the ballot. His most vehement foe, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was rejected as a presidential candidate because he was convicted of fraud in a case widely regarded as politically motivated. Navalny and his supporters had called for an election boycott but the extent of its success could not immediately be gauged.
The election came amid escalating tensions between Russia and the West, with reports that Moscow was behind the nerve-agent poisoning this month of a former Russian double agent in Britain and that its internet trolls had mounted an extensive campaign to undermine the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Britain and Russia last week announced tit-for-tat diplomat expulsions over the spy case and the United States issued new sanctions.
Russian officials denounced both cases as efforts to interfere in the Russian election. But the disputes likely worked in Putin’s favour, reinforcing the official stance that the West is infected with “Russophobia” and determined to undermine both Putin and traditional Russian values.
The election took place on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, one of the most dramatic manifestations of Putin’s drive to reassert Russia’s power.
Crimea and Russia’s subsequent support of separatists in eastern Ukraine led to an array of U.S. and European sanctions that, along with falling oil prices, damaged the Russian economy and halved the ruble’s value. But Putin’s popularity remained strong.
In his next six years in office, Putin is likely to assert Russia’s power abroad even more strongly. Just weeks before the election, he announced that Russia has developed advanced nuclear weapons capable of evading missile defences. The Russian military campaign that bolsters the Syrian government is clearly aimed at strengthening Russia’s foothold in the Middle East and Russia eagerly eyes possible reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula as a lucrative economic opportunity.
At home, Putin will be faced with how to groom a successor or devise a strategy to circumvent term limits, how to drive diversification in an economy still highly dependent on oil and gas and how to improve medical care and social services in Russian regions far removed from the cosmopolitan glitter of Moscow.
Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin was confident of victory, saying he would consider any percentage of votes a success. “The program that I propose for the country is the right one,” he declared.
Given the lack of real competition in the race, authorities struggled against voter apathy, in the process putting many of Russia’s nearly 111 million voters under intense pressure to cast ballots.
Yevgeny Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, told The Associated Press that local officials and state employees all received orders “from higher up” to make sure the presidential vote turnout was over 60 per cent.
In Moscow, first-time voters were being given free tickets for pop concerts and health authorities were offering free cancer screenings at some polling stations.
Voters appeared to be turning in out in larger numbers Sunday than in Russia’s last presidential election in 2012, when Putin faced a serious opposition movement and violations like multiple voting, ballot stuffing and coercion marred the voting.