SALON

Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 4:45 PM UTC

Triumphant Putin Pours Scorn On Opposition

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Triumphant Putin Pours Scorn On OppositionRussian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visits the election monitoring center in Moscow, Tuesday, March 6, 2012. Putin won his third presidential term in Sunday's election. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Yana Lapikova, Government Press Service)(Credit: AP)

MOSCOW (AP) — A jubilant Vladimir Putin on Wednesday shrugged off opposition claims that his presidential election victory was unfair and marred by fraud, saying any violations were not significant enough to affect the vote’s outcome.

Putin slapped at his foes, criticizing them as failing to offer a constructive program and daring the opposition to become a real political force by proving its worth at the ballot box — a tall order in a country where elections are tightly controlled and opposition parties have been sidelined.

The Russian leader’s tough remarks indicate he has no intention of softening his policies in response to massive protests that have revealed the depths of public anger over his 12-year rule.

“Those who lose never like their defeat,” a beaming Putin said.

Putin, who has steadily rolled back Russia’s post-Soviet freedoms to tighten controls over the political scene, suggested that his opponents take advantage of Kremlin-drafted bills yet to take effect that ease restrictive registration rules for political parties and liberalize campaign rules.

The Kremlin reforms came in response to a series of massive protests against Putin’s rule, which had been fueled by the fraud-tainted parliamentary election in December.

The Kremlin approved a new demonstration for Saturday on Novy Arbat, one of Moscow’s major avenues, but even one of the protests’ organizers acknowledged it would be hard to sustain the movement’s momentum, calling “the romantic phase of protest” over.

Putin, president from 2000 to 2008 before becoming prime minister due to term limits, won a third six-year term with nearly 64 percent of the ballot of Sunday’s vote. The opposition and independent observers said the vote was marred by massive violations, including so-called “carousel voting” in which busloads of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times.

The League of Voters, a loose civil organization that trained volunteers to monitor the presidential election, said Wednesday it does not recognize the outcome of the vote, which it described as unfair and dishonest.

Putin dismissed the claim, saying that there could have been some violations, but they could only have affected “one percent (of the ballots) at most.”

“Our opponents must listen to the voice of people, who have said their word,” he said in televised comments. “Society doesn’t seem to like what they offer.”

Putin’s statements came after helmeted riot police forcefully broke up Monday’s opposition protest. An authorized rally that drew about 20,000 to a downtown square went on peacefully, but after it ended police dispersed a few hundred protesters who tried to occupy the square in a bid to challenge Putin’s election victory.

Police arrested about 250 people, who were later released.

Putin praised the police for acting “professionally” and said the protesters themselves had provoked the crackdown. “After they openly and deliberately violated the law, police were obliged to act,” he said.

Monday’s rally were small compared to previous protests, which attracted as many as 100,000 in a massive outpouring of public anger.

Boris Akunin, one of the rallies’ organizers and a well-known novelist, said Wednesday that the “romantic phase of the protests is over” and he “would not be surprised” if the Saturday event attracted a smaller crowd, primarily made up of disgruntled observers who witnessed vote-rigging.

“People have realized that you cannot oppose robots from the riot police with white ribbons, white balloons and funny flash mobs,” Akunin told reporters. “People are feeling a kind of stupor. People need some time to think things over.”

____

Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report.

More Vladimir Isachenkov.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
202 points203 points | 7 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
147 points148 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
48 points49 points | 8 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
51 points52 points | 23 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
24 points25 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations