Russian election: Putin-backed party well ahead - exit polls

[webfact]

Russian election: Putin-backed party well ahead - exit polls

 

MOSCOW: -- United Russia, backed by President Vladimir Putin, is far ahead in the nation's parliamentary election, taking at least 44%, exit polls suggest.

 

Mr Putin said: "We can say with certainty that the party has achieved a very good result."

 

The nationalist LDPR and the Communist party are way behind United Russia, with about 14-16% each.

 

Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37403242

 

-- © Copyright BBC 2016-09-19

[craigt3365]

Being in a political party opposed to Putin seems to be a big problem.

 

http://news.sky.com/story/the-putin-critics-who-have-been-assassinated-10369350

 

 

[LawrenceChee]

Good to have some stability


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[craigt3365]

16 minutes ago, LawrenceChee said:

Good to have some stability


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Like in China?  No freedom of press, no human rights, etc?  Great stability.

[LawrenceChee]

Visit more often ....the normal person in the street in China is no different from any one in the west

I really believe the normal person is happy , because most Chinese don't care about politics , the family unit is more important than GDP , communist propaganda etc

Strange the west always think their Chinese counterparts is in a worse state ....the media there must be so free they like to report shit
just because they can and they know they don't care what the readers are reading

I have a western CEO who visited China for the first time this year ....worked for Fortune 500 countries and thought China was backwards etc until he visited Shenzhen , went to Alibaba and spoke the youth management team and was surprised by the dynamism and the knowledge , openness to challenge opinions of and when he saw the working model of WeChat he was flabbergasted that a Chinese app can combine and work better than all the tech apps of the west

It changed his opinion of China after the 2 weeks spent there and taking in the speed trains, talking in business chambers of commerce and visiting universities ...next year his top executives are all spending at least one month in China each to understand the place better and culturally engaged

Watch a YouTube of WeChat and it's functionalities ....



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[NongKhaiKid]

Nice webcam footage being shown on BBC of an election official apparently stuffing a ballot.

Surely not.  

[craigt3365]

8 minutes ago, LawrenceChee said:

Visit more often ....the normal person in the street is no different from any one in the west


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

I've spent 6 months in China, a month in Russia and many months in the former USSR satellite states.  Only a few I've not been to and I'll be visiting them in 2 weeks (Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Moldova with a visit to Transnistria).  What you say is absolutely incorrect.  Most I've met in Russia did not like the West, but had a deep desire to immigrate there.  And most in the former satellite states have ZERO desire to be part of Russia again.  Zero.  China...well...that's another story.

[craigt3365]

13 minutes ago, NongKhaiKid said:

Nice webcam footage being shown on BBC of an election official apparently stuffing a ballot.

Surely not.  

Guaranteed there's ballot stuffing!   Yet some seem to prefer this method...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Russia#Criticism_of_recent_elections

Quote

 

Since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia there has been increasing international criticism of the conduct of Russian elections. European institutions who observed the December 2007 legislative elections concluded that these were not fair elections. Göran Lennmarker, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said that the elections "failed to meet many of the commitments and standards that we have. It was not a fair election."^[7]Luc Van den Brande, who headed a delegation from the Council of Europe, referred to the "overwhelming influence of the president's office and the president on the campaign" and said there was "abuse of administrative resources" designed to influence the outcome. He also said there were "flaws in the secrecy of the vote." "Effectively, we can't say these were fair elections," he said at a news conference.^[8]

 

In February 2008 The human rights organisation Amnesty International said that the presidential election on 2 March would not be a genuine election: "There is no real opposition ahead of the election. There is no real electoral campaign battle," Friederike Behr, Amnesty's Russia researcher, was quoted as saying. In a report on the elections, Amnesty said laws restricting non-government organizations, police breaking up demonstrations, and harassment from critics were all part of "a systematic destruction of civil liberties in Russia."^[9] Another human rights organisation, Freedom House, said that the victory of Putin's party in the 2007 elections "was achieved under patently unfair and non-competitive conditions calling into doubt the result’s legitimacy."^[10]

 

The Russian government has acted to prevent international observers monitoring Russian elections. In 2007 the OSCE was prevented from monitoring the legislative elections held in December.^[11] In February 2008 the European Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights announced that it would not send observers to monitor the presidential election on 2 March, citing what it called "severe restrictions" imposed on its work by the Russian government. "We made every effort in good faith to deploy our mission, even under the conditions imposed by the Russian authorities", said Christian Strohal, the organization’s director. "The Russian Federation has created limitations that are not conducive to undertaking election observation".^[12] The OSCE has also withdrawn its attempts to monitor the elections.

 

 

[webfact]

Early results: Ruling party winning Russian parliament vote 
JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press
NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press

 

MOSCOW (AP) — Early results on Sunday showed Russia's ruling United Russia party winning in the parliamentary election amid reports of election violations and visible voter apathy in the country's two largest cities.

 

With more than 22 percent of the ballots counted, United Russia was recording 50.3 percent of the vote for party-list seats and was far ahead in single-district contests.

 

The Liberal Democrats and Communists were both recording about 15 percent and A Just Russia had 6 percent. Neither of the two parties which openly oppose President Vladimir Putin was seen making it into the parliament.

 

The results are likely to change as votes are counted from the western parts of Russia that are more urbanized and where opposition sentiment is stronger. But the election for the 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of parliament, is unlikely to substantially change the distribution of power, in which the United Russia party has held an absolute majority for more than a decade.

 

Perceived honesty of the election could be a critical factor in whether protests arise following the voting.

 

Massive demonstrations broke out in Moscow after the last Duma election in 2011, unsettling authorities with their size and persistence.

 

Russian Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova, who pledged to clean up the notoriously rigged system when she assumed the post earlier this year, said as the polls closed that she saw no reason to nullify the vote in any location, conceding, however, that the election "wasn't sterile."

 

Putin, who formally is not a United Russia member, turned up at its election headquarters shortly after the first results were announced and congratulated the would-be lawmakers.

 

"Things are tough but people still voted for United Russia," he said. "It means that people see that United Russia members are really working hard for people even though it doesn't always work."

 

Putin referred to the unusually low turnout as "not the highest," but said it was good enough for the Kremlin party to win an absolute majority.

 

Voter turnout in Russia's largest cities appeared to be much lower than five years ago, indicating that the widespread practice of coercing state employees to vote in previous elections wasn't as prevalent this time around.

 

The turnout by 6 p.m. (1500 GMT; 11 a.m. EDT) was at a record low of 29 percent in Moscow, compared to over 50 percent five years earlier, and under 20 percent in St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city.

 

Previous elections have shown that the regions with the highest turnout were where voters, mostly state employees, were pressured to cast ballots.

 

Independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, in remarks on the online television channel Dozhd, described the low turnout as the urbanite's "sofa sit-in."

 

"It's a form of protest, it's escapism," Oreshkin said. "People want to stay away from politics."

 

Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the election monitoring group Golos, said the lower voter turnout reflected less anxiety among local authorities to produce a high turnout.

 

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister and leader of the Parnas party, said after the first votes were counted that he was concerned about the low turnout: "Citizens had no faith in elections as an institution. This is the result of government policies. It's their fault."

 

Golos had received more than 2,000 complaints of suspected vote rigging from all over the country by early afternoon. Among the reported violations were long lines of soldiers voting at stations where they weren't registered, and voters casting their ballots on tables instead of curtained-off voting booths.

 

Videos posted on YouTube appeared to show poll workers in several regions in southern Russia dropping multiple sheets of paper into a ballot box.

 

In the Siberian region of Altai, a candidate from the liberal Yabloko party claimed that young people were voting in the name of elderly people unlikely to come to polling stations. Pamfilova said the results from Altai could be annulled if allegations of vote fraud there were confirmed.

 

In Moscow, independent election observers and opposition candidates on Sunday reported busloads of people arriving at their polling stations to vote, fueling speculations of multiple voting with the help of absentee ballots.

 

Melkonyants of Golos said most of the complaints the organization received from Moscow were about those groups of voters although he said he "couldn't categorically say that this is a violation."

 

"But observers perceive it as a trick which local officials could be using in order to boost the turnout in their districts," Melkonyants said, adding that the bus passengers also may have been coerced to vote in violation of Russian law.

 

Pamfilova conceded that boosting the turnout in the areas where it was expected to be low might explain the voters traveling by bus and denied suggestions of multiple voting.

 

"It makes no difference where a person votes for the party of their choice," she said.

 

This election is a departure from the two previous votes for the Duma, in which seats were distributed on a national party-list basis. This year, half the seats are being contested in single districts. Independent candidates were also allowed, although only 23 met the requirements to get on the ballot, according to the elections-monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

 

Many voters at a polling station in southwest Moscow said the only reason to cast a ballot was to take votes away from United Russia, which has dominated the parliament for more than a decade.

 

Alexei Krugly, 63, said he voted for Yabloko because he "feels even more distaste for others."

 

"They're just as bad as everyone, but I stand for diversity," he said. "This time I came (to vote) because Yabloko got its act together and I think it has chances to make it to the Duma."

 

In the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, dozens of right-wing protesters gathered around the Russian Embassy, where a voting station was set up. At least one demonstrator was detained in a scuffle with police. Another demonstration took place outside the Russian consulate in Odessa, where four protesters were arrested.

 

-- © Associated Press 2016-09-19

[Pakboong]

I have been in and out of Thailand since the Viet Nam War. On my first trip, there were no Chinese or Russian tourist. The farongs here were mostly American soldiers. There were Chinese but they were from the  Coolie and Communist revolutions of years gone by. Now it has reversed itself. Bus loads of Russians and Chinese show up daily. If I isolate those times and situations, I draw different conclusions. Hanging on to the the Soviet Union and Communism has run its course and no longer serves a purpose. Now it is the TSA and Homeland Security asking for "Papers Please". The communist revolution has pretty much run its course and we are facing new threats but many will come from within.

 

It seems to me that too many of us are living in the past.

[craigt3365]

1 minute ago, Pakboong said:

It seems to me that too many of us are living in the past.

That seems to apply to most governments around the world.  Afraid (greedy) to let go of what they have.  Change is desperately needed.

[LawrenceChee]

The reality is governance is dirty business and whatever model whether democracy or communist its stays dirty ...

While the west electorate views the government as an extension of their views and representation and hence I believe the strong tags of wanting freedom of expression and the right of criticism

The east is drastically different ...in the east they view the government as a model of serving their needs like passport issuance, garbage collection etc and hence can be seen as not as engaged in politics as the west.

The reality is in the east they want as little interference as possible , lowest taxes and keep the place clean. The ranting etc in parliament most in the east don't care ....


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[tonbridgebrit]

Yeah, and when there is a party we like, and it's ahead in the polls, we call it a democratic vote.

But when the party in the lead is a party we don't like, well, it's called a rigged vote. 

 

[Credo]

31 minutes ago, LawrenceChee said:

The reality is governance is dirty business and whatever model whether democracy or communist its stays dirty ...

While the west electorate views the government as an extension of their views and representation and hence I believe the strong tags of wanting freedom of expression and the right of criticism

The east is drastically different ...in the east they view the government as a model of serving their needs like passport issuance, garbage collection etc and hence can be seen as not as engaged in politics as the west.

The reality is in the east they want as little interference as possible , lowest taxes and keep the place clean. The ranting etc in parliament most in the east don't care ....


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There is East and there is West and then there is Russia.   

[craigt3365]

38 minutes ago, LawrenceChee said:

The reality is in the east they want as little interference as possible , lowest taxes and keep the place clean. The ranting etc in parliament most in the east don't care ....

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Yet the East has some of the worst polluters in the world.  Seems the government is not doing it's duty then?

 

As far as interference and taxes go, the West has the same desire.  Plus, they try to keep the place clean.  Same same!

[craigt3365]

22 minutes ago, tonbridgebrit said:

Yeah, and when there is a party we like, and it's ahead in the polls, we call it a democratic vote.

But when the party in the lead is a party we don't like, well, it's called a rigged vote. 

 

You seem to have gotten misled somewhere.  To cynical. 

[LawrenceChee]

Yet the East has some of the worst polluters in the world.  Seems the government is not doing it's duty then?

 

As far as interference and taxes go, the West has the same desire.  Plus, they try to keep the place clean.  Same same!

It's hard when the west keeps sending its ship waste , electronic trash etc to India & Bangladesh...now they have dumped chemical waste and thinking of nuclear waste as well

Hard for Bangladesh to say no as they are garment factory of the world and everyone needs 50 shirts in their wardrobe ....

China by default is the world's factory and in proportion has the air pollution and waste along with it

Hard when Asian countries are developing and poorer and hence exploited in early days.... Hopefully there will be a tilt of balance soon in the next decade

If you read my earlier posts, I hate this and want this off the country and manage it in better numbers but the world is guilty as shit in this in mass consumption and wastage purchases and this will not help unless people stop buying in bulk ....

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[chilli42]

4 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Like in China?  No freedom of press, no human rights, etc?  Great stability.

 

In theory, democracy and the freedoms we have are a wonderful thing.  In practice, it's another thing.  Somehow, we end up electing politicians who don't represent our interests, who are beholding to groups who's only interest is to rape and pillage our birthright and wealth, and leaders who regularly lie to us even to the point of taking us to war based on lies etc.. We have a legal system that provides leniency to the rich and punishes the poor completely out of proportion to their crimes. Sadly, we are willing participants in our own manipulation.  In the final analysis, are we so much better off that we can say our way is clearly superior?  Once upon a time, it may have been the case but not so much today.

[chilli42]

2 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Yet the East has some of the worst polluters in the world.  Seems the government is not doing it's duty then?

 

As far as interference and taxes go, the West has the same desire.  Plus, they try to keep the place clean.  Same same!

 

Among the worlds top 10 polluters, USA leads by a long way based on per capita CO2 emissions.  What is that government doing?  Wait and see what happens when the Paris accords are run by Senate/Congress.  

[craigt3365]

16 minutes ago, chilli42 said:

 

In theory, democracy and the freedoms we have are a wonderful thing.  In practice, it's another thing.  Somehow, we end up electing politicians who don't represent our interests, who are beholding to groups who's only interest is to rape and pillage our birthright and wealth, and leaders who regularly lie to us even to the point of taking us to war based on lies etc.. We have a legal system that provides leniency to the rich and punishes the poor completely out of proportion to their crimes. Sadly, we are willing participants in our own manipulation.  In the final analysis, are we so much better off that we can say our way is clearly superior?  Once upon a time, it may have been the case but not so much today.

So you are saying it's better in Russia or China than in the US or Europe?  I know what I'd chose.  It ain't perfect, but it's the best we've got.

[craigt3365]

4 minutes ago, chilli42 said:

 

Among the worlds top 10 polluters, USA leads by a long way based on per capita CO2 emissions.  What is that government doing?  Wait and see what happens when the Paris accords are run by Senate/Congress.  

Maybe best to look at total CO2 emissions.  China leads by a long shot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

 

But this is off topic.  We're talking about Russia and elections.

[chilli42]

3 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

So you are saying it's better in Russia or China than in the US or Europe?  I know what I'd chose.  It ain't perfect, but it's the best we've got.

 

No, that is not what I said is it. To paraphrase ... we are far from perfect and it would be useful to remember this before we heap scorn on countries like China and Russia.

[elgordo38]

6 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Being in a political party opposed to Putin seems to be a big problem.

 

http://news.sky.com/story/the-putin-critics-who-have-been-assassinated-10369350

 

 

Puff Putin the magic dragon. Russians are betting on a one horse race. A sure winner? well for Putin and his tag team partner Medvedev its the old Russian two step. They seem to tag each other off every so many years and switch roles and wallah your getting a new old recycled fresh face. Its the Russian version of the old shell game.

Edited September 19, 2016 by elgordo38

[craigt3365]

21 minutes ago, chilli42 said:

 

No, that is not what I said is it. To paraphrase ... we are far from perfect and it would be useful to remember this before we heap scorn on countries like China and Russia.

Agreed!  I heap scorn on the US also.  Just saying I'd prefer the political systems of the US and Europe versus most other countries.  Far better legal protection also.

[coma]

6 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Being in a political party opposed to Putin seems to be a big problem.

 

http://news.sky.com/story/the-putin-critics-who-have-been-assassinated-10369350

 

 

 

Especially when one of them is a communist party. Remember the big huff and puff the US and its henchmen made about communism mid last century ? What has changed within the communism ideology since ?

[craigt3365]

8 minutes ago, coma said:

 

Especially when one of them is a communist party. Remember the big huff and puff the US and its henchmen made about communism mid last century ? What has changed within the communism ideology since ?

Russia isn't a communist country now.  So I guess there was a change.  Sadly, they've got a long way to go with regards to being democratic.

 

https://www.reference.com/government-politics/four-pillars-democracy-bac2813a9373a7d2

Quote

The four pillars of democracy are justice, equality, freedom and representation. These pillars were established to ensure the rights and freedoms of all citizens governed by a democracy.

 

[Chris Lawrence]

Isn't Putin one of the richest men in his country. So why stay in power? Is it to protect the power base and the rubles keep going into the bank account. A very rugged man in a gay way?

[Jblood]

"Russia isn't a communist country now.  So I guess there was a change.  Sadly, they've got a long way to go with regards to being democratic. "

 

Sadly the West has absolute Zero Democracy, and even more sadly even though Russia isn't Communist anymore, America and EU surely are.. lol

 

"They've got a long way to go"... lol, yeah it's a totally long way to go to a total Zero Democracy, as it is in the West.

 

 

[nausea]

Ordinary Russians know they need a strong leader. Dredging my memory I seem to recall Ivan the Terrible, absented himself from a leadership role, but was called back cos no-one else could control the country  - Hobbes and all that.

[craigt3365]

5 hours ago, Jblood said:

"Russia isn't a communist country now.  So I guess there was a change.  Sadly, they've got a long way to go with regards to being democratic. "

 

Sadly the West has absolute Zero Democracy, and even more sadly even though Russia isn't Communist anymore, America and EU surely are.. lol

 

"They've got a long way to go"... lol, yeah it's a totally long way to go to a total Zero Democracy, as it is in the West.

If you say the West has zero democracy, then you must not understand democracy.  It's not perfect, but it's the closest we've got.