Putin claims election victory

Brushing off US criticism of a one-sided election campaign, Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed victory early today after voters handed him an expected landslide win for a second four-year term.

With 96.1% of precincts reporting from yesterday’s election, Putin had 71.1%. His closest challenger, Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, received 13.9%. Election officials said 61.48% of the 109 million registered voters cast ballots, surpassing the 50% required for the election to be valid.

“I think I have worked hard all those years and I worked honestly. People must have felt it,” Putin said, appearing at his Red Square election headquarters tieless, wearing a black sweater under a black blazer.

“I promise you that, for the next four years, I will work in the same mode.”

Opposition observers and human rights groups cried foul during the voting, talking of pre-marked ballots and pressure on students and soldiers.

“The authorities are resorting to pressuring the electorate and abusing their powers to manipulate the vote,” nationalist candidate Sergei Glazyev said at an election-monitoring centre jointly run with Kharitonov and liberal candidate Irina Khakamada.

Despite minimal voter traffic at polling places in the capital of breakaway Chechnya and its second-largest city, Gudermes, election officials claimed turnout in the war-torn region reached nearly 90% of the more than 596,000 registered voters there.

Officials said close to 93% voted for Putin, who rose to prominence by launching the latest Chechen war as prime minister in 1999.

But in Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States “was concerned about a level of authoritarianism creeping back in the society”.

“We don’t hesitate to point out to President Putin that he should use the popularity that he has to broaden the political dialogue and not use his popularity to throttle political dialogue and openness in the society,” Powell told ABC TV.

That set off an angry rebuke from the Cabinet chief of staff and a calmer retort from Putin, who said the 2000 Florida election fiasco in the United States showed the weaknesses of the world’s oldest democracy.

Some “see the splinter in another’s eye and ignore the log in his own”, Putin said.

“If we think there is something to think about, we will draw the corresponding conclusions,” he said.

Putin spent part of election day working out with the Russian national boxing team – sparring barehanded and showing off the clean-living image that has made him popular with Russians tired of the erratic Boris Yeltsin, who was plagued by health troubles and reported alcohol abuse.

Yeltsin elevated Putin, a former KGB agent who later headed one of its successor agencies, to take over as acting president after his surprise resignation on the eve of the millennium.

In the March 2000 election, Putin won 52.9% of the vote and Communist Gennady Zyuganov gave him a respectable challenge with 29.2%.

Since then, Putin has consolidated his grip on the Kremlin and sought to reduce the influence of Yeltsin holdovers – a mission he completed this month by appointing a new cabinet filled with loyalists and potential fall guys for painful economic reforms.

“We will modernise the country, act resolutely, but explain our every step so that people understand what’s done and why,” Putin said today. “The art of politics is finding the middle line between what is necessary and what is possible.”

December parliamentary elections handed Putin a legislature filled with loyalists from a party whose only real platform was their support of him – with a majority strong enough to change the constitution and allow Putin to seek a third term.

Putin has said he does not support such a move and declined today to speculate on a successor.

The election campaign was virtually non-existent, with Putin relying mainly on the sycophantic coverage he normally gets from state-run TV – the only medium that reaches across the world’s largest country.

Independent TV channels have suffered under Putin’s rule, with one station turned into a sports channel and another now owned by the state-connected gas monopoly.

In pre-election monitoring, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe had criticised Russian media coverage as giving far more time to Putin than any of his five challengers.