Russian parliament speaker: election system imperfect

Russia’s election system is not perfect and has some serious problems, the speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house said ahead of the December parliamentary elections. “There are problems and they are very serious. The election system is definitely not perfect,” newly appointed Speaker of the Russian Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda daily. She said, however, that now is not the best time to reform the election system as the parliamentary elections will soon start. “I believe that after the elections are held we must once again go back and analyze the whole situation and think about next steps toward the democratization and liberalization of our election system,” Matviyenko said. The ruling United Russia party led by then-president Vladimir Putin won the previous parliamentary elections in 2007. International observers from the OSCE and the Council of Europe said at the time that the election was unfair and "failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and standards for democratic elections."