http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/12/08/russia.poll/OSCE condemns Russia election
From CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty and Correspondent Ryan Chilcote
Monday, December 8, 2003 Posted: 8:07 AM EST (1307 GMT)
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- International election observers have harshly criticized the pre-election process of Russia's parliamentary elections, saying it was biased towards the main pro-Kremlin party.
Preliminary election results show the pro-state United Russia party -- one of 23 parties on the ballot -- on its way to significant gains in the 450-seat Duma, with lesser pro-Kremlin parties also gaining ground.
<snip>
Voice Association director Lilia Shabanova said that while the violations in the pre-election process exceeded her organization's expectations, incidents that occurred the night before the vote were "completely unexpected."
"The electoral commissions did not accept complaints," she said. "Our observers were even threatened that if they write complaints they won't be allowed to observe the vote count."
Shabanova said the top problems her observers saw were with the voter lists, which she said were not properly bound and had been purged of many voters, including those who did not vote in the last election.
"There was an enormous amount of violations during the ballot count to the extent that many of the observers simply weren't able to see anything," she said. "For example, our observer in Samara said the ballots weren't examined individually, they were leafed through in a pile without pulling them apart."
Shabanova said Voice Association had not expected "that kind of behavior fro the election officials.
"It's too early to call it a falsification before we're done analyzing it all," she said, "but I think they were orchestrated."
Communist party leader Geenady Zyuganov dismissed the vote as "nothing to do with democracy." (Full Story)
<snip>