Putin disengages from United Russia.

By bne IntelliNews January 17, 2012
As announced by the head of the PM Vladimir Putin's presidential campaign film director Stanislav Govorukhin, Putin is going to rely on the United People's Front in his elections campaign and not on the ruling party United Russia. Govorukhin added that United Russia "made many mistakes" and "represents only a small share of the society". In December Putin already hinted that Untied People's Front is going to be the basis for his election campaign. People's Front is a pro-Putin country-wide movement uniting various political and social organisations created in the fall 2011. It is not clear how far the disengagement from the United Russia ruling party which PM Putin used to head and with which he is closely affiliated will go. To remind, in the recent parliamentary elections United Russia got 49.5% of the votes, Communists 19% of the votes, Just Russia 13% of the votes and Liberal Democrats (LDPR) 11.6% of the votes. Voters' turnout was at about 60%. For United Russia this made a 15% decline in voter support (it got 238 seats in State Duma, which is going to be a 64-seat decrease and not enough to pass constitutional legislation that requires a 300-vote majority). Even despite the 15% decline in support, the elections were followed by the record-large wave of country-wide protests against election falsifications and fraud in favour of United Russia.

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