Posted on 03/14/2004 10:44:47 AM PST by nuconvert
Putin Wins Second Term With 69 Percent of the Vote, Exit Polls Show
Mar. 14, 2004
By Steve Gutterman/ Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW (AP) - As widely expected, President Vladimir Putin easily won a second term in elections Sunday with 69 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll. The poll, conducted by the non-governmental Public Opinion Foundation, surveyed 120,000 voters at 1,200 polling stations.
Official figures with 15 percent of the vote counted gave Putin 66.5 percent, Central Election Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov said.
Ninety minutes before polls closed in heavily populated western Russia, electoral officials said that 61.18 percent of voters nationwide had cast ballots. Once the turnout exceeded 50 percent, the election was considered valid.
Assured of victory, Putin had sought a powerful turnout to further strengthen his grip over Russia - already tightened by his appointment of a loyal new Cabinet just before the vote and by December parliamentary elections that gave the main pro-Kremlin party full control over lawmaking.
Putin, who reined in Russia's independent media after his election in 2000, dominated the nationwide television networks before the vote. His five challengers received less coverage, adding to a widespread impression that the election was a one-horse race.
"I voted for Putin because he is going to win anyway and what is the point in voting for someone else," said financial inspector Yelena Chebakova, 31, one of a handful of early voters at a Moscow polling station.
A frenzy of television appeals by Putin, his rivals and even top religious leaders urging people to vote reflected Kremlin concerns that the lack of a challenger with a chance of unseating the president might keep Russians away from the ballot box.
After voting in Moscow on Sunday morning alongside his wife, Lyudmila, Putin made a last-minute plea, saying that "much depends on this election" and that "the feeling of involvement must increase year after year."
The election lasted 22 hours, stretching over 11 time zones, before ending at 8 p.m. in the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.
Nadezhda, a kindergarten teacher who gave only her first name, didn't need the encouragement provided by a van that cruised around her Moscow neighborhood with a loudspeaker shouting that voting is the way to "a dignified life and a bright future."
"I always vote - it is my country and my responsibility," she said, adding that she voted for Putin. She said he is "young and energetic" - qualities that many Russians cite for their support of the trim, 51-year-old president, who has also benefited from steady economic growth during his first term.
But about one-fifth of Russia's 144 million people live in poverty and the gap between rich and poor remains wide, stoking anger at the authorities.
Irina Kozhukhova, a 42-year-old worker at a radio factory in St. Petersburg, said she checked the box marked "against all" because she felt none of the candidates was worth voting for.
"I didn't vote for Putin because I've seen no changes - neither in politics nor in the economy," she said.
Amid calls by some liberals for a boycott of the vote, which came three months after parliamentary elections that international observers called a setback for democracy, rival candidates and rights groups alleged vote- rigging in favor of Putin, including 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 told The Associated Press. He spoke at an election monitoring center he set up jointly with liberal candidate Irina Khakamada and Communist Nikolai Kharitonov.
Citing monitors, the joint center said that patients at a Moscow psychiatric hospital complained that the ballots they received were already marked for Putin.
VOICE, a grass-roots election monitoring association, reported that officers at a military base in the Volga River region of Samara received telegrams from the Defense Ministry ordering them to tell their superiors, in writing, the time they and their family members voted. Students at Samara State Aerospace University were threatened with eviction from their dormitory if they didn't vote, VOICE alleged.
Putin has not openly campaigned, instead relying on his image as a stable, disciplined leader to appeal to a nation still traumatized by the political and social upheavals that followed the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Opinion polls had predicted he would gain more than 75 percent of the vote, with his nearest challenger Glazyev in the low single digits. In addition to Khakamada and Kharitonov, Putin also faced Oleg Malyshkin, the little-known candidate from flamboyant nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party, and Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the upper house of parliament. Mironov had said he was running to support the incumbent.
The exit poll indicated that Putin's rivals did better than expected. It put Kharitonov in second place, with 12.6 percent of the vote, followed by nationalist Sergei Glazyev and liberal candidate Irina Khakamada, with about 4.7 percent each.
More than 500 foreign observers were registered to watch the voting.
Nope I didn't post it.
I think the statement "I find Putin scary" comes from the fact that he sees Putin as a strong leader.
"So far, no other oligarch has been arrested but the chill in the Russian business community is palpable. One oligarch, who even boasts close personal links to the president, told me he never leaves home without an air ticket to London and his passport. Some of us wonder what is so bad about all this."
http://www.gateway2russia.com/artr.php?artid=221728&srcid=1241,821&parent=FT.COM%20News
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