President Vladimir Putin's party dominated as expected after parliamentary elections Sunday, according to dpa. Immediately after polling stations closed in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad at 18.00 GMT, Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov gave first results from 11 time zones away in Russia's Far East that ended voting mid-morning. With less than 12 per cent of the overall votes counted, the victory of Putin-lead party United Russia's with 61 per cent was already being announced by Churov on state television. The Kremlin has cast the vote as a referendum on Putin's, and Sunday's victory could act as a popular mandate for him to retain power when his presidency ends in March. United Russia was followed by the Communist party with 11.5 per cent. Russia's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party and pro-Kremlin party A Just Russia barely passed the seven per cent entry threshold for Russia's lower house of parliament with 8.8 and 7.1 per cent respectively. Results were expected through the night from Russia's fifth parliamentary vote since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Turnout among the country's 109 million registered voters was more than 50 per cent, up from 2003 figures. There is no minimum turnout for the elections to be validated. Putin said he was in a "festive" mood voting Sunday with his wife Ludmila in Moscow. "Thank God, the election race is over," Putin said after casting his ballot. The 55-year-old Kremlin leader, who heads United Russia's party list, citing laws about unlawful campaigning declined to reveal his vote. "But, I think you know my preference," he said, echoing his comments in 2003 when he first endorsed United Russia. Accusations were rife by all 11 parties participating in the vote that Putin's party enjoyed an unfair advantage under new election laws and blanket media coverage due to Putin's abuse of the presidents' office to campaign. Russian watchdogs reported Sunday that the authorities were pressuring public sector employees to get out the vote. The independent monitoring body Golos, or "voice," which receives EU and US funding, said over 1,000 voting irregularities had been called into its hotline. The election-monitoring arm of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was not monitoring Sunday's vote. Only 299 foreign election-observers, 180 of them from post-Soviet states, were in place to judge the fairness of the vote across Russia's 96,000 polling stations. Putin accused the United States of standing behind the OSCE's decision with the aim of tarnishing Russia's vote. Analysts said that anything less than a 60 per cent win for United Russia would be seen by the Kremlin as an insult to the Putin's soaring popularity rating in his eight-year presidency over a booming, oil-fuelled economy. Putin, who is barred from a third term in office, has said a big win for his party would hand him a "moral" mandate for ensuring the "continuity" of his policies after the March presidential vote. Western-celebrated opposition leader and chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was jailed for five days before the elections and forbidden to see his lawyer, spoiled his ballot by adding the name of his opposition coalition The Other Russia. The Other Russia, which Putin has likened to foreign-funded "jackals," was banned by new election laws from registering as party and authorities' crackdowns on their protest marches have repeatedly drawn Western fire. The only liberal party registered in Russia's vote, The Union of Right Forces, filed complaints with the Central Elections Commission over the media's blanket coverage of United Russia which it said was due to Putin's abuse of his post as president during the campaign. The complaints were rejected, and the party has since said that police have raided their offices and arrested regional party members. The head of the communist party Gennady Zyuganov said these were "the dirtiest and most irresponsible elections" since the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. Under former president Boris Yeltsin "there were two ways to get votes - intimidation and fixing results - now they have thought up at least 15 ways to swindle and capture votes," he said after voting.
