Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said yesterday the results of Russia’s contested parliamentary polls will stand despite a wave of street protests and a probe by the election authorities.
Even if you add up all this so-called evidence, it accounts for just over 0.5 per cent of the total number of votes- Putin spokesman
“Even if you add up all this so-called evidence, it accounts for just over 0.5 per cent of the total number of votes,” Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a telephone interview.
“So even if hypothetically you recognise that they are being contested in court, then in any case, this can in no way affect the question of the vote’s legitimacy or the overall results,” Mr Peskov said.
His comments followed an order from President Dmitry Medvedev for election officials to look into reports of vote-fixing after the ruling party’s narrow victory sparked the largest protest rallies since the 1990s.
Saturday’s demonstrations near the Kremlin saw more than 50,000 people deride the outcome of the December 4 elections that were widely seen as a litmus test for Putin’s planned return to the presidency next year.
Mr Putin himself shunned the public spotlight over the weekend and did not make any reference to the elections in comments aired on state television Monday from a trip to the central region of Tver.
But a hint of the state’s new strategy emerged when ex-finance minister Alexei Kudrin – an old Putin ally from their days in native Saint Petersburg – proposed building a new party that could gain better legitimacy with frustrated voters.
That idea was followed almost immediately by the announcement by metals tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov that he intended to build a new pro-business party with Kudrin and challenge Mr Putin in the March poll.
“We have a parliament that is completely leftist,” Mr Prokhorov said.
The 46-year-old globe-trotting businessman, his lanky frame of over two metres always held upright with military precision, said he was not taking the decision lightly considering the fate of past politically-ambitious tycoons.
After all, the last billionaire to pose a direct challenge to Putin – Yukos oil company founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky – has been sitting in jail since 2003 on fraud and tax evasion conviction that will keep him there until 2016.
“I am not doing anything illegal,” Mr Prokhorov said defensively when asked about the Khodorkovsky case.
“I am going in with my head held high and am not afraid.”
An often mysterious figure who has flourished thanks to both business and political savvy, Mr Prokhorov has rarely made fatal miscalculations in the past.
His decision to run for president comes amid swelling public anger at the outcome of a contested parliamentary poll, sagging Putin approval ratings, and a growing call for the emergence of a new Kremlin-approved political force.
Some think Mr Prokhorov is only in it to make the presidential vote look competitive, while others feel he may actually succeed in uniting powerful business interests that had suffered from the corruption roiling Russia today. But he has indisputably offered a fresh political agenda, insisting that Russia needs radical change to halt a potentially terminal decline.
With his Onexim holding group’s interests ranging from mining to media to new technologies, Mr Prokhorov has slammed state control of industry and called for the return of elections for regional governors – scrapped under Mr Putin. He has also urged closer economic ties with the European Union and for Russia to join the euro, attracting widespread ridicule.
Mr Prokhorov may well be best known in the West as the owner of the NBA New Jersey Nets basketball team, which he is moving to Brooklyn and hoping to make into New York’s new sports darling.