Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin claimed victory in a presidential election that his opponents say was marred by fraud, accusing protesters against his rule of seeking to usurp power.
“We won in an open and honest fight,” Putin said in front of thousands of supporters near the Kremlin last night as tears streamed down his face. “We showed that our people can easily distinguish between a desire for novelty and renewal from political provocations which have only one goal: to destroy Russian statehood and usurp power.”
Putin, 59, who has been at Russia’s helm for 12 years including the last four as premier, won another six years in the Kremlin with 63.8 percent of the vote, with more than 99 percent of all ballots counted. About 65 percent of the country’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots, Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov said on state television. Opposition groups plan a rally in Moscow today.
The Russian leader is seeking to reassert his authority in the face of renewed protests over electoral fraud allegations similar to those that sparked the largest unrest in his decade in power. Outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev, who agreed to step aside in September to make way for Putin, appeared alongside his predecessor at the rally. Putin backed the presidential candidacy of Medvedev, 46, four years ago, when the constitution prevented him from running for a third consecutive term.
‘Frustration and Anger’
“Putin may have won the election but the challenges he’s been facing in the past few months won’t go away,” said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “There is deep frustration and anger, and protests will continue.”
Putin’s support plummeted last year, culminating in rallies that brought tens of thousands of people to the streets of Moscow and other major cities to protest alleged fraud in the ruling United Russia party’s victory in Dec. 4 elections. The premier vowed to raise spending on social programs and the military as he stepped up campaign promises to reverse the slide in his ratings.
Exit polls by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, or VTsIOM, and the Public Opinion Foundation, or FOM, estimated Putin’s total at 58.3 percent and 59.3 percent, respectively. Officials gave Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov 17.2 percent, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov 7.8 percent, Vladimir Zhirinovsky 6.2 percent and Sergei Mironov 3.9 percent.
Fraud Allegations
Fraud allegations are exceeding reports received during the conduct of the election three months ago, Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
About 5,000 reports of violations had been registered nationwide, the Golos vote monitoring group said by e-mail. Zyuganov and Prokhorov questioned the fairness of the balloting.
The vote was the cleanest election in the “entire history of Russia,” Putin’s campaign manager, Stanislav Govorukhin, told reporters.
The ruble has gained 9.7 percent against the dollar this year, the third-best performance among currencies tracked by Bloomberg, behind the Hungarian forint and the Polish zloty. The benchmark Micex (INDEXCF) stock index is up 15.5 percent, after gaining 0.7 percent at the start of trading today.
The cost of insuring government debt against non-payment for five years using credit-default swaps fell to 179 basis points on March 2, its lowest level since Aug. 17, according to data provider CMA, which is owned by CME Group Inc. (CME) and compiles prices quoted by dealers in the privately negotiated market.
‘Happy Investors’
“Investors will be happy if the exit polls are confirmed,” Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Moscow-based investment bank Troika Dialog, said by e-mail. “Attention will quickly switch to who will be appointed in the key positions in the next government and how Putin can deliver on the promises made during his election campaign without busting the budget.”
As European nations adopt record austerity measures that have toppled governments from Spain to Romania, Putin’s pledges may raise government spending by as much as 4.8 trillion rubles ($164 billion), or 5 percent of economic output, through 2018, Capital Economics estimates.
‘Full Support’
More than 100,000 people gathered near the Kremlin for the rally to celebrate Putin’s victory, state television said. One of the participants, Sergei Smykov, 50, an autoworker from Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast from Moscow, said Putin had restored Russia after the chaos of the 1990s. “He has my full support,” he said.
The election was “absolutely unfair,” Zyuganov said on state television. He declined to congratulate Putin on his victory or recognize the outcome. Prokhorov also said he didn’t consider the presidential vote honest.
Putin’s election is “illegitimate” and protests led by middle-class Russians won’t die down, said former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, an opposition leader.
“We will continue to call people to the streets,” Kasyanov said by phone. “Mr. Putin has been selected as the winner of this so-called election, and the middle-class in Moscow and other cities know that without this pressure we won’t achieve anything.”
The opposition is calling for new parliamentary and presidential elections in March 2013 and March 2014, Kasyanov said.
Observers
The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe and Golos will release their assessment of the presidential vote today.
In the southwestern district of Akademicheskaya, a member of the electoral commission filed a complaint after five minibuses of people came to vote at a polling station. The people said they were soccer players who had been invited to Moscow for a game by United Russia, said the official, Yuri Zuev, adding that he suspected them of multiple voting.
Opposition parties including the Communists have alleged United Russia inflated its result in December to about 50 percent, having won closer to 30 percent of the vote. International observers said the elections were marred by ballot-stuffing.
“It is already evident that the violations are clearly and indisputably affecting the outcome of the vote and yet again show that these are not real elections,” said Navalny.
Authorities installed web cameras in more than 91,000 polling stations in a bid to allay concerns about fraud. The OSCE, which is deploying 230 observers together with the Council of Europe, said in a report last month that the cameras couldn’t capture all the details of the voting process, in particular during counting.
“The next term may be tragic for Putin,” Igor Bunin, head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technology, said by phone. “He will have to solve dozens of social and economic problems in his term, and to solve them, he risks losing the support of his core electorate.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net; Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net