Pro-Putin Parties Poised To Rule

Allies of President Vladimir Putin won a sweeping victory in parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results Monday, strengthening his hand as he plots strategy for the second term he is expected to win next year.

Europe's top security and human rights watchdog condemned the elections as a retreat from the democratic reforms Russia adopted after the fall of the Soviet Union, saying that fawning media coverage of the president's allies before the vote gave them an unfair advantage.

"Our main impression of the overall electoral process was ... one of regression in the democratization of this country," said Bruce George, head of the parliamentary assembly for the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The United Russia party, whose main ideology appears to be its loyalty to Putin, led all contenders with about 37 percent support in Sunday's vote, Central Election Commission Chairman Alexander Veshnyakov said, with more than 90 percent of the ballots counted.

The Communists were next, with 12.7 percent, followed by ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which always votes with Putin; and Homeland, a new, apparently Kremlin-approved patriotic grouping formed to syphon votes from the Communists.

Russia's two main liberal parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, came in below the minimum necessary to enter the parliament as parties.

Throughout the campaign, state-run television ceaselessly criticized United Russia's opponents, such as the Communist Party, accusing leaders of living it up while its humble supporters struggle to survive.

With no other parties getting the minimum 5 percent, it was certain the Kremlin's allies would win the vast majority of the 225 seats that will be filled by the party vote. The other half of the lower house's 450 seats will be filled in individual races, where United Russia and its allies were also expected to poll strongly.

"The United Russia party has won, the president has won. That means that democratic reforms in Russia will continue. This is a serious victory we can rightly be proud of," said Lyubov Sliska, a top figure in United Russia.

It was Putin's first major test at the ballot box since he was elected president in 2000 as former President Boris Yeltsin's hand-picked successor. Since then, he has pushed economic reforms and sought to crack down on bureaucracy, but has also limited dissent and taken tighter control of the press.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov dismissed Sunday's elections as a "disgusting show ... that has nothing to do with democracy." The head of the Communists' Moscow branch, Alexander Kuvayev, claimed widespread violations in the capital, including ballot-box stuffing and votes cast for dead people.

He vowed the party would protest what he said were falsified results, the Interfax news agency reported.

The OSCE, which sent 400 monitors, said the balloting itself was fair.

"The election campaign did not go as positively," former German lawmaker Rita Suessmuth said. "Putin and his party had a dominating presence on state television, so that all other parties had much less access there."

Allegations have also arisen about negative campaigning and the use of so-called "administrative resources" — levers of influence enjoyed by a party filled with government bureaucrats — to win votes.

A lower voter turnout seemed to indicate many Russians thought the outcome was inevitable, and nearly 5 percent of the electorate or about 2.8 million people — voted to reject all the candidates.

More might in the lower house, known as the State Duma, would make it easier for Putin to push through the sometimes unpopular market-oriented economic reforms he has promised. It would also give Putin an even stronger hand as he heads into what seems sure to be a second term after the presidential ballot next March.

Union of Right Forces chief Boris Nemtsov expressed alarm at the strong showings by United Russia and the nationalist parties, suggesting they will act together to tighten an authoritarian grip on a country still finding its footing 12 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"The majority will belong to those who stand for a police state, for curtailing civic freedoms, for shutting down independent judicial authority" and for antagonistic relations with Russia's neighbors and the West, Nemtsov said in televised comments.

Analysts said United Russia and its allies were angling for a two-thirds majority required to make constitutional changes — a lever they could use to extend Putin's term or let him run for a third. Putin has not said whether he would approve of such a step, and the move would also require the upper house and Russia's regional legislatures to agree.

The full extent of the Kremlin's power over the lower parliament will not be clear until after results from individual races is known.

But the results — more than 90 percent of the vote had been counted so far — indicated a two-thirds majority was well within reach.

Nikolai, a 54-year-old entrepreneur in Moscow who gave only his first name, said he did not vote for United Russia "because the state is in danger: the danger of single-party rule."

The surprisingly strong showing by LDPR — it had 11.8 percent — would also help the Kremlin. In the outgoing Duma, the LDPR almost always voted the Kremlin line despite the fiery proclamations of Zhirinovsky, its often clownish leader.

Veshnyakov said Yabloko and SPS had polled 4.3 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.

Homeland, a newly formed patriotic party combining communists and nationalists, had 9 percent, Veshnyakov said.

Security was tightened across much of the country after a bombing Friday that killed 42 people on a commuter train near Chechnya. Putin called the attack an attempt to destabilize the country ahead of the election.