Russian President Vladimir Putin has given up his lawmaker's
mandate in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the
Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Thursday.
"Vladimir Putin has given up his lawmaker's mandate to Sergei
Kapkov, who was on United Russia's regional list and ran his
election campaign in the Magadan region and the Chukotka Autonomous
Area," secretary of the CEC Sergei Konkin was quoted by the
Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
Konkin disclosed that the CEC had received 101 applications from
winning parliamentary candidates wishing to relinquish their
mandates in favor of their colleagues.
The United Russia Party, led by Putin, scored a landslide
victory in the Dec. 2 parliamentary elections, obtaining 64.3
percent of the vote and 315 parliamentary seats out of the 450 Duma
seats.
According to the law, any candidate must either reject the
mandate or confirm their position as a State Duma deputy within
five days of the official results of the polls being made
public.
The final official results unveiled on Saturday showed that the
Communist Party obtained 57 seats, the Liberal Democratic Party
40seats and Fair Russia 38 seats.
After the 2003 parliamentary election, all state and government
officials on the United Russia Party ticket rejected their mandates
and kept their previous posts, which many voters considered a
deception.
(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2007)
