Russia election 'insult to civil society'

Russia's presidential polls won by Vladimir Putin were an "insult to civil society" due to mass violations, an activist group fronted by celebrities said Wednesday, refusing to recognise the results. "Due to widespread violations, we consider it impossible to recognise the results of the presidential elections," the League of Voters said in a statement after Putin's crushing victory in Sunday's polls. The League of Voters is an umbrella organisation of activist groups set up in the run-up to the March 4 elections and fronted by anti-Kremlin celebrities like the rock singer Yuri Shevchuk and detective novelist Boris Akunin. "We consider that on March 4 an insult was delivered to civil society. The institution of the Russian presidency, the electoral system and the whole state authority were discredited," the statement said. Putin won Sunday's election with 63.6 percent of the vote and in his victory speech declared that his win had been "open and honest". But NGO vote monitoring groups have alleged a swathe of cases of multiple voting and ballot-stuffing and his nearest rival, the Communist Party candidate Gennady Zyuganov, has also refused to recognise the results. The deputy head of Russia's central election commission Leonid Ivlev denied the accusations and accused the League of Voters of following a "pre-ordained aim" of denouncing the polls, the Interfax news agency reported. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov added that "all the estimations (about the elections) have already been given and the question is closed." International observers led by the OSCE had said the presidential election was skewed in favour of Putin during the campaign and the ballot was marred by irregularities, in particular during the vote count. The League of Voters said that according to its estimations Putin won a much lower rating of 53 percent and tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov 16 percent, double what he was given in official results. But it also warned that these figures were subject to a margin of error as their independent observers were concentrated most in Moscow, where Putin according to official results won less than half the votes.