- President Vladimir Putin took control of the Russian
parliament last night, removing the last effective bastion of opposition
to his rule and paving the way for him to assume Tsar-like power.
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- Exit polls last night gave United Russia, the president's
party, 37 per cent of the vote, the Communists 15 per cent and Vladimir
Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats 12 per cent. Rodina, a new nationalist
party, was predicted to have won nine per cent.
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- This would give Mr Putin's party and its allies about
58 per cent of the vote and return Russia to an era of single-party dominance
after 12 years of vibrant, if corrupt, democracy.
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- With 11.33 per cent of the votes counted, United Russia
had 36.3 per cent, the Liberal Democrats 14.8 per cent, the Communists
12.9 and Rodina 7.7 per cent.
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- Liberals predicted the election would come to be seen
as a milestone on the country's slow regression towards Soviet-style authoritarianism.
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- United Russia is hoping that it might win a two-thirds
majority in the new State Duma which would give it the power to change
the constitution at will.
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- Rumours abound that Mr Putin, who is all but certain
to win a second term in March next year, wants to scrap a clause limiting
the president to two terms in office.
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- Officially the former KGB spy is above the fray and should
not endorse United Russia, the party he created to support him four years
ago. But, in an address 10 days ago, he said the election would determine
"whether my hands and feet are tied, whether the president would be
able to do his work or not".
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- In economic terms Russia is a robust and brash capitalist
economy, which has embraced the principle of private ownership, but politically
Mr Putin and his entourage now dominate the country.
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- Anna Pastukhova, an official with Memorial, a Russian
human rights organisation, in the Urals town of Yekaterinburg, said: "We
are moving back to a time of less freedom and democracy and more control.
Our local governor, who is with United Russia, said that it is right we
should have in this country one dominant party and a few small ones. What
kind of a vision is that?"
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- The Communists, traditionally the country's largest parliamentary
party, have been subjected to weeks of vicious attack on national and local
television. The result has been that United Russia has surged ahead of
them in recent weeks after level-pegging in the autumn.
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- Gennady Zyuganov, the veteran Communist leader, said:
"The election campaign has been an evil farce. Formally the parliament
will be elected but in fact it will be appointed by the presidential administration."
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- The first step in the reversal of Russian democracy came
in 1993 when President Yeltsin stripped parliament of many of its powers,
handing them to himself.
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- Since Mr Putin came to office in 2000 the process has
been accelerated. Opposition-controlled media have been neutered and tycoons
unwilling to toe the Kremlin line exiled or jailed. United Russia, invented
by Mr Putin as a vehicle for his policies in the State Duma, has risen
in importance.
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- Victory today will represent a remarkable achievement
for a party that has no ideology and only the barest outline of a political
platform.
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- Its identity is so amorphous that its campaign posters
carry pictures of both Stalin and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the veteran Soviet-era
dissident.
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- In the run-up to the elections, its leaders have refused
to hold television debates, suggesting they were above such things.
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- Many United Russia supporters say they will back the
party simply because it is already in power. One man, a driver, said he
would vote for it because "they are the bosses".
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- Officially, each party is limited to spending about £5
million on the election campaign but independent estimates say United Russia
may have spent hundreds of millions.
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- Western observers say the slanted media coverage and
incidents of gerrymandering mean this Russian election is the least democratic
since Boris Yeltsin came to power. "It's far worse than in 1999,"
one observer said. "We warned the government that they must stop the
abuses but they don't care what we think."
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- As a result, the only two liberal parties presently in
the Duma - Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces - may fail to achieve
the five per cent needed for representation.
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- The only group of voters set to outstrip United Russia
supporters are those who have become so alienated that they will not vote
at all - as many as 40 per cent of Russia's 110 million eligible voters.
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- Polling was conducted amid tight security after a suicide
bombing on a packed commuter train in Yessentuki in southern Russia claimed
42 lives on Friday. A man believed to have conspired in the attack was
arrested yesterday. Chechen separatists are suspected of seeking to disrupt
the election.
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