| Putin 'wins' Russia's presidential election |
Vladimir Putin on course to victory in the first round over his four rivals, exit polls and initial results show. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led the pack in the first report of results announced by the Russian Central With 30 per cent of the votes counted at 19:00 GMT, Putin was leading by a landslide, with 63.4 per cent. He appeared before a crowd of around 100,000 supporters at a square near the Kremlin on Sunday evening to celebrate his victory. Speaking with the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, at his side, Putin showed uncharacteristic emotion. |
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2012 19:27 | |||||
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led the pack in the first report of results announced by the Russian Central With 30 per cent of the votes counted at 19:00 GMT, Putin was leading by a landslide, with 63.4 per cent. He appeared before a crowd of around 100,000 supporters at a square near the Kremlin on Sunday evening to celebrate his victory. Speaking with the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, at his side, Putin showed uncharacteristic emotion.
"We have won in an open and honest battle," Putin said with tears in his eyes and his voice hoarse. "I promised you we would win, we won. Glory to Russia!" Results from polling stations in the Far East on Sunday gave Putin a comfortable lead over his closest rivals "It's very clear that very many Russians have voted for Putin, but they've done so without the same enthusiasm they've had in the past," Hull said. "61.81 per cent is for candidate Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin," Vladimir Churov, chairperson of the electoral body, announced. Exit polls showed that Putin is set to win with a big majority. Putin won 58.3 per cent of the vote according to an exit poll from the state-controlled VTsIOM research group, and 59.3 per cent in a survey by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), effectively ruling out a second round of voting. Al Jazeera's Christopher True, reporting from Moscow, said: "The result was greeted with a small ripple of applause by the various people gathered inside the CEC, as the result that nearly everyone in Russia had expected was effectively confirmed." Fraud allegations Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov called the vote "crooked, absolutely unfair and unworthy," while a senior leader of the protest movement, Vladimir Ryzhkov, said "these elections cannot be considered legitimate in any way." "In a bid to counteract fraud, two web cameras have been intalled in each of the country's 90,000 polling stations, one showing the ballot box, the second showing election officials," True reported. "Putin is widely expected to win the vote in the first round and all eyes are on whether he will continue with business as usual or bow to some of the protesters' demands." In comments made after he voted in Moscow, Prime Minister Putin said that he was "counting on" a high voter turnout. Alexei Navalny, an opposition protest organiser and well-known blogger, meanwhile, alleged that "obvious and irrefutable" violations were taking place at polling stations, and that vote counting was "neither fair nor truthful". "These are not going to be honest elections, but we must not relent,'' Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union who has grown increasingly critical of Putin, said as he cast his ballot. Golos, an independent monitoring group, said it had already registered 2,283 reports of violations nationwide. Lilia Shibanova, the executive director of the group, told Al Jazeera there had been "a lot of abuses" in Moscow, central Russia and Baskortostan. "On the positive side, the web cameras and transparent ballot boxes have surely helped and it is the first time we have been able to monitor the elections in Chechnya, Dagestan and the Caucasus," she said. An interior ministry spokesperson said there had been no major violations. Ria Novosti news agency is quoting a source in that Dagestan election commission as saying the results at that polling station where apparent ballot staffing was observed through the live web cams – will be canceled. Putin victory forecast His Communist rival Gennady Zyuganov - a dour but seasoned lawmaker who is running for the fourth time - is polling in second place with 17.3 per cent of the vote according to the most recent results released by the CEC. The tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov had 7.3 per cent, slightly ahead of the flamboyant but ultimately pro-Kremlin populistVladimir Zhirinovsky 7.2 per cent). The former upper house speaker Sergey Mironov is currently looking to finish last, with 3.7 per cent. Opponents said the voting was heavily skewed to help the former KGB spy return to the Kremlin after four years |
But ugh. As someone studying Russian- going there in a couple of years, too- this is just depressing. Not unexpected at all, but depressing. Though I was a little heartened by the growth in opposition, at least.
I've been studying the Russian language since 7th grade (I'm a sophomore in college now), and my high school Russian teacher was an American who got interested in the language/culture/etc in college, went there to teach English, married a Russian woman, and still had direct ties to the country, going to visit his wife's family, etc. He was always so fascinated by Putin, and stated that he was what Russia needed, that he was so loved there. I always found Putin suspicious, and when I went to Russia the summer before junior year (to study 4 weeks at a boarding school in Obninsk), I didn't really get to see the real Russia, being with teen girls in a secluded school, but I saw glimpses, like graffiti stating 'We need a new Russia' and 'Russia without Putin'. Getting into college level language studies, I got to see more, like interviews with opposition politicians, so I gained a fuller insight, although I still have that sheltered American viewpoint.
The Slavic languages department at my school does a once-a-semester talent/variety show, and there are ALWAYS skits spoofing Putin. He's easy to lampoon--on the surface. But so very frightening in truth. Despite my wavering commitment to the language (foreign languages, like music, are things I love but am not very skilled at executing), I still care deeply about this glorious, strange, baffling, diverse country, and I hate to see all these developments, all these negative ones when there is so much passion in change for the better.
TL;DR: As a student of Russian, this depresses me so very much, but it still comes as no shock.
This.
Putin? REALLY?
That's so unexpected ...
Chechnya.
*whistles and walks away*
(Is there any proof they actually let them vote in Chechnya???)