RUSSIA: Russian President Vladimir Putin crushed his rivals yesterday to win a second term in the Kremlin, after promising to raise living standards and slash corruption across the world's largest country. Daniel McLaughlin reports from Moscow
Early official exit polls showed Mr Putin won nearly 70 per cent of the vote, with Communist Party candidate Mr Nikolai Kharitonov second on 14.7 per cent.
Nationalist Mr Sergei Glazyev was third on 4.3 per cent, followed by liberal challenger Ms Irina Khakamada on 4.2 per cent. Some 4.1 per cent of Russians voted "against all". Turnout was well over the 50 per cent minimum to validate the poll.
"The leader is definite. No change is seen. The leader, and obvious leader, is Vladimir Putin," declared Alexander Veshnyakov, head of the Central Electoral Commission. But Mr Putin's celebrations were immediately tempered by unusually sharp US criticism of the election campaign and cries of foul by his opponents, who said dirty tricks were rife on polling day.
"We are concerned about the way this election is being held," Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, told US television.
"Russians have to understand that to have full democracy of the kind the international community will recognise, you've got to let candidates have all access to the media that the president has." Russian television is state-controlled, and bombarded viewers with positive coverage of Mr Putin, a former KGB spy who has overseen a steady increase in wages and pensions since election to the Kremlin in 2000.
Critics lambast him for failing to end the war with Chechnya's rebels, or prevent a string of lethal bomb attacks in Moscow, and for drafting security service veterans into political posts to help him emasculate the media and silence political opponents such as the jailed billionaire, Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"We don't hesitate to point out to President Putin that he should use the popularity that he has to broaden the political dialogue, and not use his popularity to throttle political dialogue and openness in the society. I don't see it going back to the days of the Soviet Union. But we are concerned about a level of authoritarianism creeping back in the society," Mr Powell said.
Mr Putin's opponents and some election observers accused his supporters of a host of dirty tricks to boost turnout and the incumbent's vote count. Patients at a Moscow hospital complained that they received ballots already marked for Mr Putin, while students at a college in the southern city of Samara said they were were forced to vote under threat of eviction from their dormitory.