(Eurasia Daily Monitor) Last Sunday (September 18), Russians went to the polls to elect the seventh State Duma in the post-Soviet history of their state. It is extremely difficult to say how many of them actually cast ballots because the official preliminary data on voter participation (47.8 percent, according to the Central Electoral Commission) is distorted by widespread and well-organized fraud that secured a confident victory for the United Russia party (TV Rain, Deutsche Welle, September 19). Pre-election opinion polls had registered a steady decline in popular support for this pseudo-party, which primarily unites the ruling bureaucracy. Moreover, surveys revealed that voters have little trust in the parliament as a state institution (Forbes.ru, September 5). The authorities invested remarkably little effort in boosting the popularity of “their” party; they sought instead to make the whole election campaign as dull and low on political content as possible (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, September 15). President Vladimir Putin held one evening meeting with the leadership of United Russia earlier this month and issued one short statement on the eve of the elections, but he devoted most of his time to foreign policy matters (Kremlin.ru, September 15; Vedomosti, September 1). […]
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