Raindrop's Blog

Vote Weakens Putin's Party

06:04, 1969-Dec-31 .. 0 comments .. Link

Vote Weakens Putin's Party Vote Weakens Putin's Party MOSCOW—Voters protesting rising utility bills Electronic whiteboardand transportation costs #xgave opposition parties a boost in Russia's regional elections, weakening the ruling United Russia party's legislative majorities and electing a Communist-backed candidate mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk, complete returns showed Monday.

Sunday's vote was a measure of how the global financial crisis, which ended a decade of rapid economic growth, has eroded support for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party.

United Russia remained dominant in all eight regional parliaments being elected, but fell short of its goal of 50% of the vote in four of the regions. Russia has a total of 83 regions.

Compared with national parliamentary elections in 2007, the party's share of ballots fell in seven of the eight regions that elected lawmakers Sunday. Its biggest slump was in Sverdlovsk,中小企业国际市场开拓资金, in the Ural Mountains, where its share of the vote slipped by 25 percentage points.

In Irkutsk, the party's defeat was viewed as Electronic whiteboarda rebuke of Mr. Putin's January decree allowing a paper mill to resume dumping waste in nearby Lake Baikal—a move that prompted a rare street protest by 2,000 people last month—and of the Kremlin-backed removal last year of a popular elected mayor.

The elections also were a test of President Dmitry Medvedev's pledge to open up the political system following allegations of widespread voter fraud by United Russia in the last round of regional voting in October. Those allegations prompted a brief opposition walkout from the federal parliament.

This time, opposition monitors were given slightly better access to the vote count, but reported election-day violations "at the same level as in October," said Lilia Shibanova, head of Golos, a leading independent watchdog group. Violations included abuse of absentee ballots and participation of unidentified officials during counting, she said.

The liberal opposition Yabloko party, a sharp critic of the Kremlin#x, was stricken from Sunday's ballots in two regions after officials ruled it had failed to collect the required number of voter signatures. Yabloko was Electronic whiteboardon the ballot elsewhere, but failed to win any parliamentary seats. 相关的主题文章：