Russia's Third President
// Dmitry Medvedev Ahead at the Polls
First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, according to preliminary data released by the Central Elections Commission, will win in the first round of presidential elections with over 65 percent of the vote. His campaign manager, chief of the presidential staff Sergey Sobyanin, stated that Medvedev has received the number of votes “needed for victory.”
Medvedev's lead over his opponents looks conclusive and corresponds to pollsters' pre-election forecasts. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov is in second place, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky is in third. Notably, both Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky received a greater portion of votes than their parties did in the State Duma elections in December. According to preliminary data, fewer people voted for independent Andrey Bogdanov than signed petitions for his nomination.
For the Kremlin, the margin of Medvedev's win was not as important as the size of the turnout. The more votes he receives, the more legitimate the new president will look in the eyes of the Russian people and the better he will be received by the world community. That is why, since December, all the resources of the administration have been directed at raising voter turnout. The CEC found out three hours before voting ended that over half of Russians had gone to the polls. CEC chairman Vladimir Churkov had no doubt then that turnout would exceed the 64-percent mark of the 2004 presidential elections and reach 67 percent.
According to preliminary statistics, the most active voters were in Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area (86.85%), Chukotka Autonomous Area (83.85%), Bashkortostan (82.29%), Tyumen Region (80.17%), Kemerovo Region (78.26%), the Altai Republic (73.09%) and Tatarstan (72.685%). Residents of Mordovia and Ingushetia lost a little of their enthusiasm for voting since the Duma elections, when nearly 100 percent of Ingushetians voted and, in some districts of Mordovia, turnout exceeded 100 percent. About 80 percent of Mordovians voted yesterday and, three hours before voting ended in Ingushetia, over 70 percent of votes had come to the polls. Only in Chechnya did voter turnout top 90 percent. Data for Russia's two largest cities was less impressive. In Moscow, only 58.32 percent of citizens voted. But that is more than in the December Duma elections (54%) or the 2004 presidential election (57%). In St. Petersburg, turnout bettered the two previous elections by 6-7 percent. Three hours before the polls closed, turnout in St. Petersburg was just over 51 percent.
The reaction of the opposition could be called standard. Zyuganov, running in his third presidential election, stated that “they have robbed the country again and; they did not provide a chance to discuss problems that came to a head long ago.” However, the results of the parallel tally of vote conducted by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation itself did not significantly differ from those released by the CEC. Yesterday at 9:00 p.m., 2 percent of the summaries had been received and processed by the Zyuganov's campaign headquarters. According to the Communists' count, the candidate received 22.5 percent of the vote, and Medvedev 60.5 percent. The Communists official filed 110 complaints with the CEC, most of them about ballot box stuffing. Communist Party member of the CEC Andrey Klychkov said that “orders from above were carried out everywhere, using whatever methods and the turnout was overstated, which is to Medvedev's advantage.” However, secretary of the CEC Nikolay Konkin told Kommersant that no complaints that could seriously effect the outcome of the election had been received.
Zhirinovsky, taking part in the presidential election for the fifth time, called the preliminary data from the vote “false statistics” and said that “we don't have elections, but a procedure for appointing the appointed president of the country.”
The CEC plans to release the official results on March 7. In the coming months, the country's leadership will be occupied with procedures that are completely new to it and to the country. There are in some senses two presidents in the country now, as Mikhail Krasnov, deputy chairman of the department of constitutional law at the Higher School of Economics and legal advisor to First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin from 1995 to 1997, explained to Kommersant. Medvedev, the president elect, will receive full powers only after his inauguration. That is possible no sooner then Russian President Vladimir Putin's term expires, May 7, the date on which he took the oath of office in 2004. Until then, Putin can issue orders, initiate and sign laws, conclude international agreements and perform any of his other constitutional duties. Thus, the outgoing president may “harm the incoming president somehow.” There was an example of this in world experience, in the United States at the beginning of the 19th century. Krasnov does not predict any such tricks from the outgoing president, however, since “Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have a gentlemen's agreement.”
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Preliminary Results of the March 2 Presidential Election
Candidate and voter turnout Preliminary results CEC at 8:00 a.m.
Turnout 97,8%
Andrey Bogdanov 1,3%
Vladimir Zhirinovsky 9,4%
Gennady Zyuganov 17,8%
Dmitry Medvedev 70,2%
Irina Nagornykh, Viktor Khamraev
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 03, 2008
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