{"id":2417,"date":"2021-09-19T16:26:10","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T16:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/?p=2417"},"modified":"2021-09-19T16:26:10","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T16:26:10","slug":"president-putins-party-set-to-retain-parliament-majority-after-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/world\/president-putins-party-set-to-retain-parliament-majority-after-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"President Putin\u2019s party set to retain parliament majority after polls"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin\u2019s party was set to retain a majority in parliament as Russia on Sunday wrapped up a three-day election in which most Kremlin critics were barred from running.
\nThe vote comes in the wake of an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition this year, with Russian authorities jailing Putin\u2019s best-known domestic foe Alexei Navalny and banning his organisations as \u201cextremist\u201d.
\nIn the lead-up to this weekend\u2019s vote, all of his top allies were arrested or had fled the country, with anyone associated with his groups kept from running in the parliamentary and local polls scheduled to close at 8:00 pm in each of Russia\u2019s 11 time zones. Polling stations in the exclave of Kaliningrad will be the last to close at 1800 GMT.
\n\u201cThere is no one to vote for,\u201d Andrei, a 33-year-old IT professional who declined to give his last name, told AFP in Moscow.
\nBut he cast his ballot in the \u201csham\u201d elections, he said, to \u201cat least show some kind of protest against the current government\u201d.
\nAs voting kicked off Friday, Apple and Google caused an uproar among Russia\u2019s opposition after they removed Navalny\u2019s \u201cSmart Voting\u201d app, which advised supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians.
\nSources familiar with Google and Apple\u2019s decision told AFP the move was taken under pressure from Russian authorities, including threats to arrest the tech giants\u2019 local staff.
\nKremlin \u2018blackmail\u2019<\/strong>
\nBy late Friday, the popular Telegram messenger had also removed Navalny\u2019s \u201cSmart Voting\u201d bot, and by Sunday Google Docs and YouTube videos containing the lists of the recommended candidates had also been blocked.
\nNavalny\u2019s allies said that Google had complied with demands made by Russia\u2019s media regulator Roskomnadzor, with Leonid Volkov describing US tech giants as having \u201ccaved in to the Kremlin\u2019s blackmail\u201d.
\nBut Navalny\u2019s team promptly made new Google Docs and YouTube videos with the lists of candidates, and in a final pitch to voters from behind bars, the Kremlin critic wrote on Instagram: \u201cToday is a day when your voice truly matters.\u201d
\nTurnout was at 40 percent as of Sunday afternoon, according to Russia\u2019s elections commission.
\nRussian social media meanwhile was inundated with reports of ballot stuffing and military servicemen patrolling polling stations.
\nCritics also pointed to online voting, new limits on independent election observers and the polls being spread over three days as presenting opportunities for mass voting fraud.
\nNo one to trust but Putin<\/strong>
\nAs of Sunday afternoon, independent election monitor Golos \u2014 which authorities branded a \u201cforeign agent\u201d ahead of the polls \u2014 had tracked close to 4,000 reports of voting violations.
\nElections chief Ella Pamfilova said her commission had received 137 reports of voting \u201ccoercion\u201d and confirmed eight cases of ballot stuffing, with three polling station heads fired as a result.
\nPamfilova also said the commission\u2019s website was under \u201cpowerful\u201d cyberattacks, adding that the majority were coming from the United States and Germany.
\nGoing into the lower house State Duma vote, Putin\u2019s United Russia party was polling at historic lows.
\nSurveys by state-run pollster VTsIOM showed fewer than 30 percent of Russians planning to vote for the party, down at least 10 percentage points ahead of the last parliamentary election in 2016.
\nWhile 68-year-old Putin remains popular, United Russia has seen its support drop as living standards decline following years of economic stagnation.
\nBut the ruling party is expected to keep its two-thirds majority in the lower house, allowing it to push through legislative changes without resistance.
\nIn addition to United Russia, 13 more parties are running in the elections. They, however, are widely seen as token opposition doing the Kremlin\u2019s bidding.
\nAnna Kartashova, a 50-year-old pharmaceutical company manager in Moscow, said she voted for United Russia because she \u201csimply trusts\u201d Putin.
\nWe just don\u2019t see anyone else we can trust in the current political landscape,\u201d she said.
\nRead more:\u00a0Sudanese military, protesters sign power-sharing document<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin\u2019s party was set to retain a majority in parliament as Russia on Sunday wrapped up a three-day election in which most Kremlin critics were barred from running. The vote comes in the wake of an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition this year, with Russian authorities jailing Putin\u2019s best-known domestic foe Alexei […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,3],"tags":[537,533,536,531,532,539,182],"class_list":["post-2417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-world","tag-afp","tag-alexei-navalny","tag-germany","tag-president-vladimir-putin","tag-russia","tag-youtube","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}