Vladimir Putin rolled to a crushing re-election victory on Sunday for
six more years as Russia’s president, and he told cheering supporters in
a triumphant but brief speech that “we are bound for success.”
There had been no doubt that Putin would win in his
fourth electoral contest; he faced seven minor candidates and his most
prominent foe was blocked from the ballot.
His only real challenge was to run up the tally so high that he could claim an indisputable mandate.
With ballots from 80 percent of Russia’s precincts
counted by early Monday, Putin had amassed 76 percent of the vote.
Observers and individual voters reported widespread violations including
ballot-box stuffing and forced voting, but the claims are unlikely to
dilute the power of Russia’s longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin.
As the embodiment of Russia’s resurgent power on the world stage,
Putin commands immense loyalty among Russians.
More than 30,000 crowded
into Manezh Square adjacent to the Kremlin in temperatures of minus-10
degrees (15-degrees F) for a victory concert and to await his words.
Putin extolled them for their support — “I am a member of your team” — and he promised them that “we are bound for success.”
Then he left the stage after speaking for less than
two minutes, a seemingly perfunctory appearance that encapsulated the
election’s predictability.
Since he took the helm in Russia on New Year’s Eve
1999 after Boris Yeltsin’s surprise resignation, Putin’s electoral power
has centered on stability, a quality cherished by Russians after the
chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union and the “wild capitalism” of the
Yeltsin years.
But that stability has been bolstered by a
suppression of dissent, the withering of independent media and the
top-down control of politics called “managed democracy.”
There were widespread reports of forced voting Sunday, efforts to make Russia appear to be a robust democracy.
Among them were two election observers in Gorny
Shchit, a rural district of Yekaterinburg, who told The Associated Press
they saw an unusually high influx of people going to the polls between
noon and 2 p.m. A doctor at a hospital in the Ural mountains city told
the AP that 2 p.m. was the deadline for health officials to report to
their superiors that they had voted.
“People were coming in all at once, (they) were
entering in groups as if a tram has arrived at a stop,” said one of the
observers, Sergei Krivonogov .
The voters were taking pictures of the
pocket calendars or leaflets that poll workers distributed, seemingly as
proof of voting, he said.
TIMES