The Hindu : Front Page : United Russia sweeps polls

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Tuesday, Dec 04, 2007
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United Russia sweeps polls

Vladimir Radyuhin

Sign of political stability: Putin

MOSCOW: It was a landslide for United Russia, the party supported by President Vladimir Putin, in the parliamentary elections held on Sunday.

With 98 per cent of the ballots counted, the party was leading with 64.1per cent, which gives it 315 seats in the 450-seat State Duma, 12 more than it had in the outgoing Lower House.

The Communists came a distant second with 11.6 per cent, followed by the Liberal Democratic Party of ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Just Russia, led by Upper House Speaker Sergei Mironov. Seven other parties failed to clear the 7 per cent threshold to win seats.

Mr. Putin hailed the vote as a “sign of political stability in Russia.” The elections showed “Russians will never allow their country to go down a destructive road as it happened in some post-Soviet States,” he said in an apparent reference to the West-sponsored “coloured revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

The new Duma would have higher legitimacy than the previous one because “it has been elected by 90 per cent of the voters who cast their ballots, as only 10 per cent voted for the parties that will not be represented in the new Duma, compared to 30 per cent in the old Duma,” he said.

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