Sunday March 1, 2009

Kremlin faces local vote test; opposition cries foul

By Dmitry Solovyov

BRYANSK, Russia (Reuters) - The Kremlin faced its first popularity test since Russia slumped into economic crisis when citizens voted on Sunday in local polls condemned by critics as flawed.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with Russia's dominant political party, United Russia, in Novo-Ogayovo outside Moscow February 27, 2009. (REUTERS/RIA Novosti/Pool)

Opponents have accused the United Russia party, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, of using dirty tricks in campaigning for some town councils, regional parliaments and mayors to cover up a fall in its popularity.

United Russia officials have dismissed as political posturing accusations it is trying to rig the vote involving about a fifth of all eligible voters in Russia.

Veteran Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov has described the campaign as "dirty and unforgiveable" and nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky led a walkout of his deputies from the State Duma (lower house of parliament) on Friday in protest.

The Communists are mounting a strong challenge for the regional parliament in Bryansk, an industrial region of 1.3 million people near Russia's border with Belarus and Ukraine.

At a polling station in the regional capital Bryansk, 380 km southwest of Moscow, 70-year-old Kira Alexandrova had come straight from her work as a night janitor in a school to vote for the Communists.

"My monthly pension is 4,300 roubles (around $122). How can I survive on this pittance?"

In an interview on the eve of the election, Bryansk regional Communist Party's second secretary, Viktor Gubenok, said about 60 to 65 percent of locals supported his party but that United Russia was trying to fix the vote.

"It is really laughable how the authorities are trying to falsify the election," he said in an office adorned with posters of past communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

KREMLIN PARTY QUIETLY CONFIDENT AHEAD OF VOTE

Neither Putin nor the ally to whom he yielded the presidency last year, Dmitry Medvedev, are directly involved in the polls.

But both are expected to look to the results for a measure of their popularity in the face of soaring unemployment and falling wages.

Although opinion polls show support for Putin and Medvedev has fallen since the financial crisis gripped Russia last October, analysts expect only a small dip in support to be registered at the polls.

United Russia, which dominates the national parliament and holds sway over much of the media, is quietly confident of retaining two-thirds control of the Bryansk regional parliament.

That mirrors the wider national picture, where the ruling party is expected to retain control of the nine regional parliaments, the mayors of the major towns and cities voting and the great bulk of the town and village councils which are up for election in 3,600 separate local campaigns.

There is no voting in Moscow or St Petersburg or in Vladivostok in the Far East which recently saw protests over tariffs on imported Japanese cars that hit the local economy.

United Russia was created during Putin's 2000-2008 terms as president to provide a stable pro-Kremlin force in an electoral framework. Putin, obliged to relinquish the presidency after two successive terms, now heads the party and runs the government.

During previous parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007-8, international monitors and Western governments complained that a lack of opposition access to the media and United Russia's use of government resources to help its campaign stacked the odds hugely against the opposition.

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