Russians in the Far East began voting Sunday in key parliamentary elections expected to hand victory to Vladimir Putin's party amid claims of campaign fraud and unprecedented intimidation of observers. "Polling stations are open," Konstantin Mikhailov, head of the local election commission in the city of Anadyr in the resource-rich Chukotka region, told AFP.
The other regions to vote first are diamond-mining Yakutia, the region of Sakhalin which includes an island chain contested by Japan, Kamchatka, and Magadan, the site of Soviet-era Gulag camps. Seven parties including Putin's ruling United Russia are running in the elections to the lower house of parliament, the 450-deputy State Duma.
It is seen as a dry run of presidential polls in March in which current Prime Minister Putin is expected to win back his old job. Analysts say United Russia had initially hoped to repeat the success of last parliamentary elections in 2007 when it secured a landslide majority of 64.3 percent and received 315 seats in the Duma. But with support for Putin and his party crumbling, United Russia is expected to win just over half the vote, according to pollsters. Russia's independent monitor group Golos (Voice) has claimed widespread violations in the election campaign, including pressure to vote for Putin's party, incurring the wrath of the Russian strongman.
Over the past days, the small Moscow-based group has become the target of what its supporters say is a brutal campaign of intimidation including a probe and a smear documentary aimed at silencing it on election day. The election was to end 21 hours later when stations close at 1700 GMT Sunday in the exclave of Kaliningrad on the borders with the European Union.
Voting in the world's largest country will begin at 2000 GMT Saturday in the Russian Far East regions and end 21 hours later when polling stations close at 1700 GMT Sunday in the exclave of Kaliningrad wedged between Poland and Lithuania. Police were on high alert ahead of the polls and the expected subsequent protests, with Moscow parking lots cleared out around polling stations and over 50,000 officers mobilised to ensure order through the weekend. In a message to the Russian people Friday, Medvedev called elections "one of the highest manifestations of democracy."
But 46 percent of Russians expect the vote to be rigged, according to a Levada opinion poll held in November, with 51 percent convinced that the elections are only an "imitation competition" with predetermined results. The run-up to the polls has also been marked by unprecedented pressure on election observers, especially on Moscow-based group Golos, which has set up a user-friendly website where people may allege violations.
Golos director Liliya Shibanova said customs officials stopped her overnight at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and demanded that she hand over her laptop computer on the pretext that it contained unlicensed software. Forced to give up her computer, she said she feared that police will proceed to upload something onto the disk without her knowledge in order to open a criminal case.
"This is very dangerous. It's an attempt to bar me from leaving Russia" for a meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, where Shibanova planned to discuss the Russian elections. Golos was taken to court Friday for alleged violations of election rules and ordered to pay a fine of 30,000 rubles ($970, 725 euros). A documentary Friday night alleged the group is acting on behalf of the US government. Opposition parties have also reported harassment of their observers, with the Communist party reporting Thursday that someone broke into their office in southern city Krasnodar and broke 150 video cameras purchased for election monitoring.
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