By- Rhytham Jain
Despite losing one-fifth of its support, Russia’s currently ruling party, the United Russia Party, a supporter of Vladimir Putin, retained its majority in the parliament after completing 3 days election which proved to be a sweeping crackdown on its critics.
After counting 33% of total votes the central election commission of Russia informed the public that United Russia is leading with 45% votes and its opposition party communist party is in the second position with 22%. They also told that this time United Russia is running lower than its past performance where they were winning 54%votes. This decrease in the voting behavior of the Russian people is due to allegations of corruption and malaise over years of faltering living standards. Kremlin critics said that the vote was in any case a shame and United Russia have performed very worse in this election. These results are unlikely to change the political landscape with Putin as being the prime minister of Russia.
Partial results are showing that the communist party is acquiring second place and in the third position, the nationalist LDPR party is leading. At the celebratory rally at the headquarters of the United Russia party followers were seen shouting Putin, Putin, Putin to a flag-waving crowd that echoed his chant.
Allies of Navalny, who is in jail for parole violation had encouraged tactical voting against Putin’s party, a scheme which amounted to supporting the candidate who is most likely to defeat it in the electoral district.
From the online voting, the election commission was slow to release the data in Moscow, where the United Russia party traditionally is not fare as compared to other regions.
Pro-Kremlin candidates were leading in the majority in 15 districts before online voting. Golos an election watchdog said that it has recorded many violations regarding the conduction of elections, problems related to the ballot boxes. The election commission also reported 12 cases of ballot stuffing from 8 districts of Russia.
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