Dmitri Medvedev wins Russian presidential elections
03 March 2008
The 2 March Russian presidential elections were won in a single round by Dmitri Medvedev. According to the Russian Central Election Commission, Medvedev, who was endorsed by Putin as his favourite successor and was widely expected to win the elections, won over 70 percent of the votes, with a voter turnout of 69 percent. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov won 18 percent of the votes, followed by nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with almost 10 percent of the vote. Bogdanov, a fairly unknown candidate running as the supposed ‘opposition’, received around 1 percent of the vote. Medvedev will be inaugurated as president on 7 May. Speaking at a press conference on the evening of 2 March, after the preliminary results of the elections had been announced, Medvedev told the public that his policies would be a “direct continuation” of current president Vladimir Putin’s. He furthermore said that he would “work jointly with Putin”, who is expected to become Russia’s prime minister and continue to wield influence on Russian politics. Opposition politicians, who were barred from competing in the elections, criticized the vote as a farce. All of the candidates that participated in the elections are considered friendly toward the Kremlin. They furthermore alleged that voters have been denied a real choice because the media were biased in favour of Medvedev. Maria Litvinovich, an aide to Kasparov, announced a March of Dissent to be held in central Moscow on 3 March. Zyuganov alleged he found evidence of fraud, and plans to challenge the election results in court. Meanwhile, the main monitoring arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced earlier this month that it would not send monitors to Russia because of restrictions by the Russian government making it impossible to make a complete assessment. According to the OSCE too little monitors were invited too late. Local election monitors that were present during the elections complained that they were hindered at several polling stations.
