Sun 19 September 2021:
On the final day of three-day elections in which most Kremlin critics were prevented from voting, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party looked likely to retain a majority in parliament on Sunday.
The decision follows an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition in Russia this year, which saw Putin’s most well-known domestic critic Alexei Navalny imprisoned and his organizations banned as “extreme.”
All of his key allies were jailed or fled the country in the run-up to this weekend’s vote, and anyone linked with his groups was barred from running in the parliamentary and local elections, which are set to end at 8:00 p.m. Sunday.
On Saturday, Navalny ally Leonid Volkov said “Putin was celebrating a huge victory” after tech giants “caved under the Kremlin’s blackmail” but still called on supporters to try to turn the Russian leader’s jubilant mood into “mourning”.
“In our battle between David and Goliath, we definitely still have the opportunity to launch the stone,” he wrote on Telegram.
Claims of censorship and widespread ballot stuffing tainted the elections.
As voting began on Friday, Apple and Google infuriated Russia’s opposition by removing Navalny’s “Smart Voting” app, which advised followers on which candidate to support to replace Kremlin-aligned officials.
Sources close to Google and Apple told AFP that the decision was made under duress from Russian authorities, who threatened to detain the tech giants’ local employees.
Navalny’s “Smart Voting” bot had been banned from the popular Telegram messenger by late Friday, and his team claimed on Saturday that Google was forcing them to delete Google Docs with recommended candidates in response to a request from Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor.
His team referred to the documents as the “final” “remaining” tools in support of their election strategy, and encouraged voters to snap a screenshot of them in case they were taken down.
Meanwhile, claims of ballot stuffing and military personnel guarding voting booths flooded Russian social media.
Online voting, new constraints on independent election observers, and polls spread out over three days, according to critics, all provide possibilities for huge voting fraud.
As of Saturday afternoon, the independent Golos election monitor had tracked more than 2,750 reports of vote violations, despite being labeled a “foreign agent” by officials ahead of the polls.
Ella Pamfilova, the head of the elections commission, said on Saturday that her office had received 137 allegations of voting “coercion.”
Going into the lower house State Duma vote, Putin’s United Russia party was polling at historical lows.
Recent polls by the state-run pollster VTsIOM revealed that fewer than 30% of Russians want to vote for the party, a drop of at least 10% from the weeks leading up to the last parliamentary election in 2016.
While Putin, who is 68 years old, remains popular, United Russia’s support has dwindled as living standards have deteriorated after years of economic stagnation.
However, it is largely believed that the ruling party would keep its two-thirds majority in the lower chamber, allowing it to pass legislation without opposition.
There are 13 other parties standing in the elections, in addition to United Russia. They are, however, usually regarded as token opposition serving the Kremlin’s interests.
(Input with agency)
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