Putin far ahead in fraud-tainted vote
Ballot-box stuffing and forced voting reported
MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin headed to an overwhelming win in Russia’s presidential election Sunday.
The vote added six years in the Kremlin for the man who has led the world’s largest country for all of the 21st century.
But the election was tainted by widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing and forced voting.
The complaints, however, will likely do little to undermine Putin.
His 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 election was to obtain a huge margin of victory in order to claim an indisputable mandate.
With ballots counted from 60 per cent of the vast country’s precincts, Putin won more than 75 per cent of the vote, the Central Elections Commission said.
In a short speech to thousands of supporters near Red Square late Sunday, Putin hailed those who voted for him as a “big national team,” adding “We are bound for success.”
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 7 p.m. Moscow time, authorities said turnout had hit nearly 60 per cent.
Putin had faced seven minor candidates on the ballot.
His most vehement foe, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was barred from running 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.
Moscow is alleged to be behind the nerve-agent poisoning this month of a former Russian double agent in Britain.
And its internet trolls were alleged, without evidence, to have 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.
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 slashed the ruble’s value by half.
But Putin’s popularity remained strong, apparently buttressed by nationalist pride.
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, authorities struggled against voter apathy, in the process putting many of Russia’s nearly 111 million voters under intense pressure to cast ballots.
Yevgeny, a 43-year-old mechanic voting in central Moscow, said he briefly wondered whether it was worth voting.
“But the answer was easy ... if I want to keep working, I vote,” he said.
He spoke on condition that his last name not be used out of concern that his employer — the Moscow city government — would find out.
Across the country in the city of Yekaterinburg, a doctor also said she was being coerced to vote.
When she hadn’t voted by midday, “the chief of my unit called me and said I was the only one who hadn’t voted,” said the doctor, Yekaterina, who spoke on condition her last name not be used.