Putin hails victory

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday held up his party's landslide election victory as a big personal endorsement but foreign observers said it was unfair and Europe and the United States demanded an inquiry.
Putin, who ran as his party's top candidate in Sunday's vote, has vowed to use the election victory to preserve influence over Russian politics after stepping down next year. Kremlin chief dismissed concerns, saying the United Russia party's victory was a "legitimate" vote of public trust. "It is now clear to me that Russians will never allow their country to develop along the destructive path seen in some other countries of the former Soviet Union," Putin said.
Putin, who portrays himself as a guarantor of Russian stability, was referring to past elections which set ex-Soviet neighbours, Ukraine and Georgia, on a pro-Western path after huge street protests.
Allegations of vote-rigging and fraud alarmed the European Union, which said free speech had been violated in the run-up to the vote, and the United States, which urged Moscow to investigate the allegations.
The Central Election Commission said that with almost all votes counted, United Russia had won 64.1 percent of votes, nearly six times as many as the nearest challenger, the Communist party. Two smaller pro-Kremlin groupings took another 16 percent of the vote and pro-Western parties won no seats.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the vote would mean Putin's policies will continue after he steps down in May 2008. "He has got support for the continuation of his course (and) he wants all his projects to be continued," Peskov said on a conference call with reporters.
Russian officials were jubilant. "This is the result we were promised last Friday," laughed one government figure. Opposition parties and international monitors said one-sided press coverage in the campaign, heavy use of government resources to campaign for pro-Kremlin parties, and numerous irregularities during voting had skewed the outcome.
Observers from the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) described the election as "not fair" in a statement, saying it "failed to meet many ... commitments and standards for democratic elections".
The Communists, who won 11.6 percent of votes, said they would challenge the result in the courts. But the head of Russia's Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, a former colleague of Putin, dismissed the allegations of fraud.
Projections by the Electoral Commission showed pro-Kremlin parties would win about 393 of the 450 seats in the next State Duma, the lower house of parliament. That would be more than enough to allow them to change the constitution if they wished.
Putin has not said what he will do after his second term ends in May. Some political observers say he could seek a third term as president, although he has said he will not change the constitution to make this possible.
Opinion polls show Putin, a 55-year-old former KGB agent, is extremely popular after eight years in power. Voters credit him with restoring stability and national pride and like his tough nationalism and criticism of the West. In Chechnya, a region in the North Caucasus which faces a separatist insurgency and is run by pro-Kremlin Ramzan Kadyrov, officials said a partial count showed United Russia had won 99.3 percent of the votes on a 99 percent turnout.