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Criticism, arrests overshadow Medvedev landslide
2008-03-03
Western criticism and dozens of opposition arrests in Moscow on Monday overshadowed Dmitry Medvedev's triumph in a presidential election to replace Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Medvedev won 70.2 percent of Sunday's vote, crushing his nearest rival, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who got 17.8 percent, the central elections commission said. Medvedev, the first deputy prime minister and head of gas monopoly Gazprom, takes over from Putin in May, when Putin will become prime minister. But allegations that the Kremlin stage-managed the poll tarnished the landslide victory. The sole Western observer mission present, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said the poll failed to reflect Russia's "democratic potential." "We think there is no freedom in this election," PACE mission chief Andreas Gross told journalists. Western capitals offered qualified congratulations to Medvedev, while French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner described the election as "Russian-style, with a victory known in advance." Russia's few remaining outspoken Kremlin critics took to the streets of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In the capital, riot police arrested dozens of people at a peaceful, but unauthorised march, including Nikita Belykh, head of the opposition Union of Right Forces party. Police grabbed activists the moment they pulled out placards or flags and, in many cases, as they were still approaching the protest area from a nearby metro station. Moscow city police's press service declined to give a number for those arrested, while a spokesman for the mayor's office, Mikhail Solomentsev, told AFP "several instigators" were detained for aggressive behaviour towards the police. In Saint Petersburg, chess legend turned Putin opponent Garry Kasparov led an authorised rally by some 3,000 demonstrators and said Medvedev was an "illegitimate figure". Medvedev's first day as president-elect suffered another PR blow when Gazprom cut at least a quarter of gas supplies to Ukraine over unpaid debts -- a dispute that underlined EU fears of over-reliance on Russia's massive energy resources. And speculation mounted over how much power an inexperienced president Medvedev will exercise when his mentor, ex-KGB officer Putin, is serving as prime minister. Medvedev, 42, ruled out any weakening of the president's role, saying that the post's powers "flow from the constitution and existing legislation and no one proposes to change them." At a celebratory rock concert on Red Square, an unusually relaxed-looking Medvedev underlined the generational shift by appearing in leather jacket and jeans. He will be the youngest Kremlin leader since Tsar Nicholas II and the first after the Bolshevik Revolution not to have risen to power through the Communist Party or, like Putin, the KGB. Yet the fact that he came to his victory party accompanied not by his wife Svetlana, but the outgoing Putin, highlighted how much Medvedev will struggle to escape his current boss' shadow. "The most interesting time will be during the spring," said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. "I have the impression that he is more independent than he appeared at first." Medvedev will also have a challenge in mending fences with the West, where Putin is widely accused of damaging post-Soviet democratic gains and making Russia an unreliable, even aggressive international partner. Both EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and US President George W. Bush said they looked forward to working with the new leader in Moscow. But other major Western capitals were more restrained. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown congratulated Medvedev, while saying he would "judge the new government on its actions and the results of those actions." German Chancellor Angela Merkel also offered congratulations with a note of caution, saying "democratic rules were not always upheld." The Czech government, which is at loggerheads with its former Soviet master over plans to host a US anti-missile system, said "restrictive practices did not allow equal conditions for all candidates."
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