Russians vote on Sunday in parliamentary polls in which the pro-Kremlin party appears set to clinch victory, bolstering Presi-dent Vladimir Putin's power before he stands for an expected second term next year.
The main Communist opposition party lags in opinion polls behind United Russia, an alliance of pro-Kremlin factions which is headed by a close Putin ally, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, and dominates the current parliament.
The outcome of the Dec. 7 poll, which could also determine who gets the key post of prime minister, is seen as crucial in shaping the next four years under the overwhelmingly popular Putin after March presidential elections.
"The Duma is a rubber stamp for every law that the Kremlin wants to pass, it will stay that way after the elections, perhaps with a slightly larger government majority," independent political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky said of the lower chamber.
United Russia, which has used state control of TV to ensure its leaders dominate the airwaves, has stolen some of the Communists' traditional policies by tycoon-bashing and harking back to Soviet ideals of a strong state.
The arrest in late October of Russia's richest man, oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on charges of massive fraud and tax evasion, was seen as a Kremlin move to eliminate a troublesome opponent who had openly financed opposition liberal parties.
But the Communists, who were also reportedly financed by Khodorkovsky and placed businessmen from his Yukos oil group on their list of candidates, were left wrong-footed by the move, which tapped into popular resentment at the nation's super-rich elite.
"Traditionalists and conservatives who once voted for the Communists have defected en masse to United Russia, the party that pays their pensions," commented political observer Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov has accused government-linked polling institutes of exaggerating the collapse in the party's fortunes. Such polls are "orchestrated by the Kremlin to manipulate public opinion," he charged.
One poll late last month suggested that 32 percent of voters supported United Russia and only 14 percent supported the Communist Party.
Independent surveys of public opinion by Russia's only non-affiliated polling agency, VTsIOM-A, do show a widening gap -- albeit much smaller -- between United Russia and the Communists.
Ten days ago, VTsIOM-A put voting intentions for United Russia at 29 percent to 30 percent and for the Communists at 24 percent to 25 percent.
In a measure of the party's dominance, a poll last month showed that a majority of the electorate were most impressed with the performance of United Russia in pre-electoral televised debates -- even though the party has refused to take part in such events.
But a bigger threat could be a low turnout. Despite strong economic growth in recent years, the majority of the population has been left untouched by the prosperity that has swept through the middle class in Russia's cities.
"The problem is not that they will vote for the opposition but that they won't vote at all," Kagarlitsky said.
Apart from the Communists, who together with their Agrarian allies currently control 127 seats in the 450-member State Duma, there are two small liberal parties that could squeeze past the 5-percent barrier to get a share of seats in the assembly.
The ultra-nationalist LDPR led by firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, with 14 seats, is also forecast to make it above 5 percent, but it has a voting record of slavishly backing the Kremlin along with United Russia and their allies, who command more than half of the Duma's seats.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion