With an opposition candidate shot dead and voters being threatened, the Kremlin is being accused of manipulating tomorrow's elections, writes Peter Finnin Moscow
Across Russia, officials loyal to the Kremlin have used unprecedented administrative pressure and harassment to disrupt the electoral campaigns of opposition parties and maximise the vote of United Russia, the party that President Vladimir Putin is leading into tomorrow's parliamentary elections, according to opposition party members, independent monitors and political analysts.
Millions of pieces of opposition campaign literature have been seized or destroyed, those observers report. Parties have found themselves unable to secure billboard or other advertising space, so that on the streets of Moscow and other cities it appears that only one party, United Russia, is running.
Campaign workers have been detained by police while attempting to canvass voters in the Urals city of Perm. A party organiser was reportedly beaten up in the Mordovia region. And a candidate for the Yabloko Party was shot and killed last week in the southern republic of Dagestan.
Speaking to foreign diplomats in the Kremlin on Wednesday, Mr Putin dismissed the cacophony of complaints from the opposition. "We know the value of real democracy," he said. "And we want to hold honest elections that are as transparent and open as possible . . ."
But around the country people tell a different story. Employees and students at state enterprises and institutions, including hospitals and universities, have come under pressure from their bosses and deans to vote for United Russia on Sunday or face retribution, according to activists.
On national and regional television stations, which are controlled by the authorities, opposition parties have received brief, non-prime-time slots for political statements and been neglected or derided in news programming. Mr Putin and other United Russia leaders, in contrast, are the subject of glowing reports.
"There was no political campaign; there was only propaganda for United Russia," said Lilia Shibanova, director of Golos, a Russian private organisation that monitors elections.
"In all state media, there was huge preference and prevalence in coverage of United Russia. Any coverage of other parties was almost 100 per cent entirely negative."
Russian elections have long been marred by dirty tricks and the mobilisation of state resources on behalf of particular parties.
"There was unfair competition in 2003," said Vladimir Gelman, a professor of political science at the European University in St Petersburg, referring to Russia's last parliamentary elections. "But the dominance of the ruling party was not as overwhelming as it is now."
Mr Putin's decision to head the United Russia ticket, the first time a sitting president has led a party in parliamentary elections, has essentially turned the vote into a personal plebiscite.
The governors of the country's 85 administrative regions, who depend on the president for their jobs because he abolished direct gubernatorial elections, appear determined to secure the maximum turnout and maximum vote for United Russia. Sixty-five of the governors are heading local United Russia election lists on Sunday, compared with 29 in 2003. That has placed almost the entire regional apparatus - from police to tax inspectors - at the party's disposal.
According to opposition parties and analysts, citing contacts in regional administrations, governors have received informal directives that they should at least match Mr Putin's 71 per cent of the vote in 2004's presidential election.
United Russia's vote has never matched the president's personal election figures, and vaulting to 70 per cent is a daunting challenge, according to opinion polls. In the most recent regional elections, in March 2007, the party got 46 per cent on average.
In interviews, organisers in 10 regions for opposition groups including the Communist Party, the Union of Right Forces (known by its Russian initials, SPS), Yabloko, and Fair Russia uniformly complained of official harassment, of being shut out of the media and of voters being threatened with loss of livelihood or position if they fail to vote for United Russia.
In the Siberian region of Kemerovo, for instance, opposition parties said they learned that the governor had demanded undated resignation letters from all district administrators, to take effect if United Russia draws less than 70 per cent of the vote in their areas.
"You now have bureaucrats threatening pensioners that their heat will be cut off unless they vote for United Russia," Alexey Roshin, a Communist Party official in Kemerovo, said . "And you know, this is Siberia. It's cold here . . . There was always some pressure, some tricks, but the difference now is huge."
Sergey Cheremnov, a spokesman for Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev, who is heading United Russia's local party list, dismissed the allegations as "somebody's stupid joke".
In Perm, Tatyana Volegova - who runs the small Yabloko Party's elections HQ - said activists were routinely detained by police when they attempted to canvass. "In one village, we had young women handing out leaflets, and they were all put in cells with drunks for three hours," Ms Volegova said.
In Nizhny Novgorod, Oleg Repin, a regional organiser and candidate for the SPS, said that billboards the party had reserved last summer were suddenly unavailable when the campaign began.
Even Fair Russia, a party created by the Kremlin with Mr Putin's open blessing, complains about the stifling of competition. Some of its leading candidates have been threatened with arrest or had their offices searched.
In Mordovia, some 400 miles southeast of Moscow, Vladimir Vasiliev, a 26-year-old graduate student and SPS candidate, said police came to his mother's apartment to fetch him for military service, then put him on a wanted list as a draft dodger. As an enrolled student and a candidate, Mr Vasiliev said, he should be exempt from military service.
Nationally, some 20 million pieces of SPS campaign literature were seized by the authorities, the party said. By its count, 17 of its leading candidates have resigned after being told by local authorities that their businesses or families would suffer if they did not.