MOSCOW: Russian voters once again elected long time President Vladimir Putin who won the elections with a landslide victory on Sunday. With the win, he will rule again over the world’s largest country for a term of another six years. This comes at a time when his ties with the western countries are continuously on hostile trajectory.
The victory over Russian elections will definately extend for nearly quarter of a century, that is to say, until the year 2024, and at that time his age will be 71 years. Josef Stalin, the dictator of Russia was the only person to have ruled for such long period. With the win comes the promises of Putin for his new term including his commitment to beef up Russia’s defence capabilities against the Western World and also to raise the living standards of comman people.
The Central Election Commission announced the outcome somewhat early before the completion of the vote counting process. It was just over 70 percent of votes that was yet counted, that the commission decided to announce the outcome. Putin has ruled Russia for the last 18 years until now and this time he had won 75.9 percent of the total votes.
Putin addressed a crowd after the victory where a cheering crowd celebrated his win as a vote of confidence as he has achieved this in very tough conditions.
“It’s very important to maintain this unity. We will think about the future of our great Motherland,” spoke Putin, before making the crowd to repeat chants of “Russia!”. He then told the supporters that very difficult times were ahead, but does have a good chance to make “a breakthrough.”
His victory was nevertheless doubtful as he was backed by the state TV, the ruling party and was also credited with an approval rating of around 80 percent. The nearest challenger to him, Pavel Grudinin from Communist Party, was able to manage a meager 13 percent in accordance with partial results, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist managed not more than 6 percent of votes.
Putin had no threats from all seven challenging candidates who ran against him and we know the fact that an opposition leader Alexei Navaly was recently barred from running for the post. Critics alleged that the officials concerned had made it sure that there is no low voter turnout due to voter boredom and they did that by compelling people to vote.
The figures of the turnout are due to be closely scruntinised. The earlier signs suggested the voter turnout may exceed 60 percent. But the Russia’s Central Election Commission already recognised that there were in fact some irregularities and at the end the overall result was termed to be legitimate.
Putin’s tough stance against West paid him off, Putin loyalists said. “I think that in the United States and Britain they’ve understood they cannot influence our elections,” Igor Morozov, a member of the upper house of parliament, said on state television.