Russians May Hand Putin Election Setback

By Ilya Arkhipov - Dec 4, 2011 8:36 PM GMT+0700

Russians may hand Prime Minister Vladimir Putin his first electoral setback in a parliamentary vote today as discontent spreads over the government’s shortcomings in curbing corruption and jumpstarting wage growth.

Putin’s United Russia party may win about 53 percent of the vote, compared with 64 percent in 2007, according to two opinion polls released Nov. 25. The Communists, Liberal Democrats and the Just Russia party may also win seats. Voting started at midnight Moscow time on the Pacific coast, eight time zones from the capital. Exit polls will be released after 9 p.m. in Moscow with unofficial results due early tomorrow.

Support for United Russia may decline from one nationwide poll to the next for the first time since the party created to back then-President Putin was founded 10 years ago. United Russia’s backing is eroding as stalling wage growth and the government’s failure to curtail corruption repel voters.

“Dissatisfaction with the level of wages and a distrust of power as venal and detached from people are directly affecting United Russia’s approval rating,” said Grigoriy Kertman, the chief analyst for the Public Opinion Foundation, also known by its Russian acronym, FOM.

By 3 p.m. Moscow time, 41.9 percent of eligible Russians had turned out to vote, “roughly in line” with the same time during the last election four years ago, Stanislav Vavilov, a deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission, said in comments broadcast on state television.

‘Good Result’

Putin, 59, said he expects a “good result for United Russia” after casting his vote at a polling station in the southwest of the Russian capital.

The premier, who is seeking to return to the Kremlin in March elections, warned last week against “smashing” the parliament’s unity and the danger of duplicating the political paralysis afflicting Europe and the U.S.

Putin would get 31 percent in a presidential election, compared with 8 percent for Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and 7 percent for President Dmitry Medvedev, according to a Nov. 18-21 Levada Center poll. A third were undecided.

‘No One to Vote For’

“There is no one to vote for other than the Communist party,” Alexander Rodionov, 23, a specialist in information technologies, said at a polling station in southwest Moscow. “I don’t like the slowness when it comes to taking major decisions in the country. Corrupt officials are not being punished, divvying up assets in the country continues. There are some changes, but not how I would have liked.”

During Putin’s first two terms as president, he worked to centralize power and increase state ownership of the country’s biggest companies. Buffeted by a booming global economy, Russia’s economic growth averaged 7 percent a year during his 2000-2008 tenure.

Gross domestic product of the world’s biggest energy exporter will rise 4.1 percent this year after a 4 percent increase last year, the government estimates. Putin is seeking annual growth of between 6 percent and 7 percent to turn the economy into one of the world’s five largest.

Real wages increased an average of 15 percent a year between 2000 and 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Including declines for much of 2009, growth has averaged 1.5 percent since.

Russia’s ranking among the world’s most corrupt nations fell to the lowest level since 2007, the year before Medvedev came to office, according to Transparency International.

Pakistan, Cameroon, Niger

Russia was the 143rd of 182 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, an improvement on its 154th place last year. Even with the better ranking, Russia remains the world’s most corrupt major economy, with higher levels of graft than in Pakistan, Cameroon and Niger.

United Russia is set to lose its two-thirds majority, which allows the party to unilaterally change the constitution. The new parliament may also have to contend with the perception of election improprieties.

The websites of a vote-monitoring group Golos and liberal media outlets including online news portal Slon.ru and the Moscow-based magazine The New Times were shut down by hackers, said Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, whose website was unavailable for at least eight hours today.

‘Being Coordinated’

“The strength of these simultaneous attacks on several websites is such that it becomes crystal clear they are being coordinated,” Venediktov said in a telephone interview from Moscow today. “We are faced with a coordinated attack on those who are trying to speak about electoral violations. It would have been nearly impossible without some participation from the government.”

Almost half of Russians expect the outcome of the vote to be manipulated by the authorities, according to a Levada center poll. International observers condemned the previous polls in 2007 as undemocratic.

The three largest opposition parties said this week their candidates and activists have been harassed, while authorities have seized campaign materials and distributed false literature. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, and the premier’s party denied the accusations.

Abuses and Irregularities

Venediktov said the radio station received about 500 reports of election abuses and irregularities as of 2 p.m. in Moscow, compared with about 40 during 2007 elections.

Opposition groups including the Communists, Yabloko and the Liberal Democratic Party are publishing reports of administrative abuses during the conduct of the vote on their websites. United Russia also accused representatives of the opposition of “massive violations.”

The Interior Ministry opened three criminal probes and 216 administrative cases into infractions of the electoral law over the past 24 hours, state-run television channel Rossiya 24 reported.

The Communists have 16.7 percent support, followed by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party with 11.6 percent and 10 percent backing for Just Russia, which campaigns for more social spending, according to VTsIOM forecasts.

‘Oligarchic Capitalism’

The Yabloko party, which campaigns against what it calls “oligarchic capitalism,” may gain one or two seats, Lilit Gevorgyan, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight, said in an e-mailed note on Dec. 2. Parties that get 5 percent are awarded one mandate, capturing 6 percent yields two, clearing 7 percent results in proportional representation.

United Russia was identified as “the party of swindlers and thieves,” a term coined by activist shareholder Alexey Navalny, by 36 percent of respondents, while 45 percent disagree with that view, according to a separate Levada poll.

“People really perceive it as the party of bureaucracy and that works as more of a minus, than a plus”, Kertman said in a Dec. 2 telephone interview. “Its popularity depends on the popularity of bureaucrats, which is now the main object for discontent.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net