Putin gets 5th term in election that was never in doubt

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MOSCOW, March 18, (Agencies): Election commission results on Monday showed that President Vladimir Putin has secured a fifth term with an overwhelming number of votes, in an election that held little suspense after the harshest crackdown on the opposition and free speech since Soviet times.
After facing only token challengers and harshly suppressing opposition voices, Putin was set to extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years. Even with little margin for protest, Russians crowded outside polling stations at noon on Sunday, the last day of the election, apparently heeding an opposition call to express their displeasure with the president.
Putin has led Russia as president or prime minister since December 1999, a tenure marked by international military aggression and an increasing intolerance for dissent.
Early Monday, Putin hailed overwhelming preliminary results as an indication of “trust” and “hope” in him – while critics saw them as another reflection of the preordained nature of the election.
“Of course, we have lots of tasks ahead. But I want to make it clear for everyone: When we were consolidated, no one has ever managed to frighten us, to suppress our will and our self-conscience. They failed in the past and they will fail in the future,” Putin said at a meeting with his campaign staff after polls closed.
Any public criticism of Putin or his war in Ukraine has been stifled. Independent media have been crippled. His fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile.
Beyond the fact that voters had virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election was extremely limited.
Russia’s Central Election Commission said Monday that with nearly 100% of all precincts counted, Putin got 87.29% of the vote. Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova said that nearly 76 million voters cast their ballots for Putin, his highest vote tally ever.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the presidents of Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela quickly congratulated Putin on his victory, as did the leaders of ex-Soviet nations Belarus, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, the West dismissed the vote as a sham.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “This is not what free and fair elections look like.”

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