Putin's Party Overwhelms Russian Election

The Kremlin portrayed the election as a plebiscite on Putin’s nearly eight years as president – with the promise that a major victory would allow him somehow to remain leader after his second term ends next year. Putin is constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term, but he clearly wants to remain in power even though he has ruled out changing the constitution to allow him to run for another term as president. A movement has sprung up in recent weeks to urge him to become a “national leader,” though it’s not clear what that would mean.

The Kremlin appeared determined to engineer a resounding victory. But Putin, credited with rebuilding Russia after the poverty and uncertainty of the 1990s, has support from many Russians. The Russian populace complained Sunday about being pressured to cast their ballots, with teachers, doctors and others saying they had been ordered by their bosses to vote.

European election monitors said Monday that Russia’s parliamentary ballot was unfair, hours after President Vladimir Putin’s party swept 70 percent of the seats in the new legislature.

The victory paves the way for Putin to remain Russia’s de facto leader even after he leaves office next spring.

Sunday’s vote followed a tense Kremlin campaign that relied on a combination of persuasion and intimidation to ensure victory for the United Russia party and for Putin, who has used a flood of oil revenues to move his country into a more assertive position on the global stage.

Posted by Dilated_Rebel
Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found...