Russians expect parliament elections to keep political status quo

A few days before the State Duma elections, Russian cities were splashed with the sky-blue posters promoting the ruling United Russia party. Their campaign overwhelms the other parties' ads, reducing them to tiny islets of red, yellow or green in a vast ocean of blue. It is not surprising that most Russians, the people on the street and political elites alike, expect the elections due on Sunday will just maintain the status quo in Russia's political landscape without causing any dramatic change. GIANT RULING PARTY According to the country's well-known sociological institution, the Yuri Levada Analytical center, nearly half of Russian citizens would simply give up their voting right at all on Sunday. The center's recent poll shows only 55 percent of the voters would cast their ballots. "This is partly because all pre-election polls demonstrate that the faction pattern in the new Duma will remain unchanged," the center's Director General Lev Gudkov told Xinhua. Moscow political analyst Arkadi Dubnov agreed the new parliament will most likely keep its current working pace and style, "because there will not be real opposition to the ruling United Russia party." The United Russia party, which was founded on Dec. 1, 2001 and won a landslide victory in the 2007 parliamentary elections, has become a giant in Russia's political arena. It has over 2 million party members, including more than 2,000 legislators at different levels of the country's legislative bodies, 315 State Duma legislators and 87 legislators in the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament. Besides, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is going to run for presidency next year, is the party's chairman, although he is not a party member. Moscow resident Svetlana Sokolova, wife of a retired military officer, said she will go and vote for Putin's United Russia. "My husband worked for the military and we are now pleased with what Putin has been doing for the military men," she told Xinhua.